(IFT2EI  cAVENjJE,    NEW    YORK 


THE 

FUTURE    IN    AMERICA 

A  SEARCH  AFTER  REALITIES 


BY 

H.    G.    WELLS 

AUTHOR  OP 

'ANTICIPATIONS"  "THE  WAR  OP  THE  WORLDS 
"THIRTY  STRANGE  STORIES"  ETC. 


ILLUSTRATED 


HARPER    &    BROTHERS     PUBLISHERS 
NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 


- 


BOOKS   BY 

H.  G.  WELLS 

SOCIAL  FORCES  IX  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA 

Crown  Svo 

THE   PASSIONATE   FRIENDS.     Illustrated.     Svo 
ANN  VERONICA.     Illustrated     Post  Svo 
THE   WAR   OF   THE   WORLDS.     Post  Svo 
THE  FUTURE   IN   AMERICA.     Illustrated.     Svo 
THE   INVISIBLE    MAN.     Post  Svo 
THIRTY   STRANGE   STORIES     Post  Svo 
WHEN   THE   SLEEPER   WAKES 

Illustrated.     Post  Svo 
ANTICIPATIONS.     Post  Svo 
SOCIALISM   AND    THE    GREAT   STATE    (Wells 

and  others).     Svo 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  NEW  YORK 


Copyright,  1906,  by  HARPHR  &  BROTHERS. 

Published  November,  1906. 
Printed,  in  the  United  States  of  America 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  THE  PROPHETIC  HABIT  OP  MIND i 

II.  MATERIAL  PROGRESS 21 

III.  NEW  YORK 35 

IV.  GROWTH  INVINCIBLE 49 

V.  THE  ECONOMIC  PROCESS 68 

VI.  SOME  ASPECTS  OP  AMERICAN  WEALTH     ....  88 

VII.  CERTAIN  WORKERS 104 

VIII.  CORRUPTION 116 

IX.  THE  IMMIGRANT 133 

X.  STATE-BLINDNESS 152 

XI.  Two  STUDIES  IN  DISAPPOINTMENT 167 

XII.  THE  TRAGEDY  OF  COLOR 185 

XIII.  THE  MIND  OP  A  MODERN  STATE 203 

XIV.  CULTURE 223 

XV.  AT  WASHINGTON 236 

THE  ENVOY 254 


423890 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

FIFTH    AVENUE,    NEW    YORK Frontispiece 

ENTRANCE    TO    BROOKLYN    BRIDGE Facing  p.    38 

STATE    STREET,    CHICAGO "  62 

WESTERN    FARMERS    STILL    OWN    THEIR    FARMS  ...  "  82 

PLUMP    AND    PRETTY    PUPILS    OF    EXTRAVAGANCE     .       .  "  90 

NEW    YORK'S    CROWDED,    LITTERED    EAST    SIDE   ...  "  106 

BREAKER    BOYS    AT    A    PENNSYLVANIA    COLLIERY      .       .  112 

INTERIOR    OF    A    NEW    YORK    OFFICE    BUILDING  ...  "  124 

WHERE    IMMIGRANT    CHILDREN    ARE    AMERICANIZED     .  "  148 

HARVARD    HALL   AND   THE    JOHNSON    GATE,  CAMBRIDGE  "  214 

A    BIT    OF    PRINCETON    UNIVERSITY "  2l6 

IN    THE    CONGRESSIONAL    LIBRARY "  238 


THE  FUTURE  IN  AMERICA 


THE  FUTURE  IN  AMERICA 


CHAPTER   I 

THE  PROPHETIC   HABIT  OF  MIND 
(At  a  writing-desk  in  Sandgate) 


"ARE  you  a  Polygamist ?" 
The  Question      "Are  you  an  Anarchist?'* 

The  questions  seem  impertinent. 
They  are  part  of  a  long  paper  of  interrogations  I 
must  answer  satisfactorily  if  I  am  to  be  regarded 
as  a  desirable  alien  to  enter  the  United  States  of 
America.  I  want  very  much  to  pass  that  great 
statue  of  Liberty  illuminating  the  World  (from  a 
central  position  in  New  York  Harbor),  in  order  to 
see  things  in  its  light,  to  talk  to  certain  people,  to 
appreciate  certain  atmospheres,  and  so  I  resist  the 
provocation  to  answer  impertinently.  I  do  not 
even  volunteer  that  I  do  not  smoke  and  am  a  total 
abstainer;  on  which  points  it  would  seem  the  States 
as  a  whole  still  keep  an  open  mind.  I  am  full  of 
curiosity  about  America,  I  am  possessed  by  a  prob- 


^  THE1  FUTURE  IN  AMERICA 

lem  I  feel  I  cannot  adequately  discuss  even  with 
myself  except  over  there,  and  I  must  go  even  at 
the  price  of  coming  to  a  decision  upon  the  theoreti 
cally  open  questions  these  two  inquiries  raise. 

My  problem  I  know  will  seem  ridiculous  and 
monstrous  when  I  give  it  in  all  its  stark  dispropor 
tions — attacked  by  me  with  my  equipment  it  will 
call  up  an  image  of  an  elephant  assailed  by  an 
ant  who  has  not  even  mastered  Jiu-jitsu — but  at 
any  rate  I've  come  to  it  in  a  natural  sort  of  way 
and  it  is  one  I  must,  for  my  own  peace  of  mind, 
make  some  kind  of  attempt  upon,  even  if  at  last  it 
means  no  more  than  the  ant  crawling  in  an  explora 
tory  way  hither  and  thither  over  that  vast  uncon 
scious  carcass  and  finally  getting  down  and  going 
away.  That  may  be  rather  good  for  the  ant,  and 
the  experience  may  be  of  interest  to  other  ants, 
however  infinitesimal  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
elephant,  the  final  value  of  his  investigation  may 
be.  And  this  tremendous  problem  in  my  case  and 
now  in  this — simply;  What  is  going  to  happen  to 
the  United  States  of  America  in  the  next  thirty 
years  or  so? 

I  do  not  know  if  the  reader  has  ever  happened 
upon  any  books  or  writings  of  mine  before,  but  if, 
what  is  highly  probable,  he  has  not,  he  may  be  curi 
ous  to  know  how  it  is  that  any  human  being  should 
be  running  about  in  so  colossally  an  interrogative 
state  of  mind.  (For  even  the  present  inquiry  is 
by  no  means  my  maximum  limit).  And  the  ex- 


THE   PROPHETIC   HABIT   OF   MIND 

planation  is  to  be  found  a  little  in  a  mental  idiosyn 
crasy  perhaps,  but  much  more  in  the  development 
of  a  special  way  of  thinking,  of  a  habit  of  mind. 

That  habit  of  mind  may  be  indicated  by  a  prop 
osition  that,  with  a  fine  air  of  discovery,  I  threw 
out  some  years  ago,  in  a  happy  ignorance  that  I 
had  been  anticipated  by  no  less  a  person  than 
Heraclitus.  "There  is  no  Being  but  Becoming," 
that  was  what  appeared  to  my  unscholarly  mind  to 
be  almost  triumphantly  new.  I  have  since  then 
informed  myself  more  fully  about  Heraclitus,  there 
are  moments  now  when  I  more  than  half  suspect 
that  all  the  thinking  I  shall  ever  do  will  simply 
serve  to  illuminate  my  understanding  of  him,  but 
at  any  rate  that  apothegm  of  his  does  exactly  con 
vey  the  intellectual  attitude  into  which  I  fall.  I 
am  curiously  not  interested  in  things,  and  curiously 
interested  in  the  consequences  of  things.  I  wouldn't 
for  the  world  go  to  see  the  United  States  for  what 
they  are — if  I  had  sound  reason  for  supposing  that 
the  entire  western  hemisphere  was  to  be  destroyed 
next  Christmas,  I  should  not,  I  think,  be  among  the 
4multitude  that  would  rush  for  one  last  look  at  that 
great  spectacle, — from  which  it  follows  naturally 
that  I  don't  propose  to  see  Niagara.  I  should  much 
more  probably  turn  an  inquiring  visage  eastward, 
with  the  west  so  certainly  provided  for.  I  have 
come  to  be,  I  am  afraid,  even  a  little  insensitive 
to  fine  immediate  things  through  this  anticipatory 
habit. 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

This  habit  of  mind  confronts  and  perplexes  my 
sense  of  things  that  simply  are,  with  my  brooding 
preoccupation  with  how  they  will  shape  presently, 
what  they  will  lead  to,  what  seed  they  will  sow  and 
how  they  will  wear.  At  times,  I  can  assure  the 
reader,  this  quality  approaches  otherworldliness,  in 
its  constant  reference  to  an  all-important  here 
after.  There  are  times  indeed  when  it  makes  life 
seem  so  transparent  and  flimsy,  seem  so  dissolving, 
so  passing  on  to  an  equally  transitory  series  of  con 
sequences,  that  the  enhanced  sense  of  instability 
becomes  restlessness  and  distress;  but  on  the  other 
hand  nothing  that  exists,  nothing  whatever,  re 
mains  altogether  vulgar  or  dull  and  dead  or  hopeless 
in  its  light.  But  the  interest  is  shifted.  The  pomp 
and  splendor  of  established  order,  the  braying  tri 
umphs,  ceremonies,  consummations,  one  sees  these 
glittering  shows  for  what  they  are — through  their 
threadbare  grandeur  shine  the  little  significant  things 
that  will  make  the  future.  .  .  . 

And  now  that  I  am  associating  myself  with  great 
names,  let  me  discover  that  I  find  this  characteristic 
turn  of  mind  of  mine,  not  only  in  Heraclitus,  the 
most  fragmentary  of  philosophers,  but  for  one  fine 
passage  at  any  rate,  in  Mr.  Henry  James,  the  least 
fragmentary  of  novelists.  In  his  recent  impressions 
of  America  I  find  him  apostrophizing  the  great 
mansions  of  Fifth  Avenue,  in  words  quite  after  my 
heart ; — 

"It's  all  very  well,"  he  writes,  "for  you  to  look 

4 


THE   PROPHETIC   HABIT   OF   MIND 

as  if,  since  you've  had  no  past,  you're  going  in,  as 
the  next  best  thing,  for  a  magnificent  compensatory 
future.  What  are  you  going  to  make  your  future 
of,  for  all  your  airs,  we  want  to  know?  What  ele 
ments  of  a  future,  as  futures  have  gone  in  the  great 
world,  are  at  all  assured  to  you?" 

I  had  already  when  I  read  that,  figured  myself 
as  addressing  if  not  these  particular  last  triumphs 
of  the  fine  Transatlantic  art  of  architecture,  then 
at  least  America  in  general  in  some  such  words.  It 
is  not  unpleasant  to  be  anticipated  by  the  chief 
Master  of  one's  craft,  it  is  indeed,  when  one  reflects 
upon  his  peculiar  intimacy  with  this  problem,  enor 
mously  reassuring,  and  so  I  have  very  gladly  an 
nexed  his  phrasing  and  put  it  here  to  honor  and 
adorn  and  in  a  manner  to  explain  my  own  enter 
prise.  I  have  already  studied  some  of  these  fine 
buildings  through  the  mediation  of  an  illustrated 
magazine — they  appear  solid,  they  appear  wonder 
ful  and  well  done  to  the  highest  pitch — and  before 
many  days  now  I  shall,  I  hope,  reconstruct  that 
particular  moment,  stand — the  latest  admirer  from 
England — regarding  these  portentous  magnificences, 
from  the  same  sidewalk — will  they  call  it? — as  my 
illustrious  predecessor,  and  with  his  question  ring 
ing  in  my  mind  all  the  louder  for  their  proximity, 
and  the  universally  acknowledged  invigoration  of 
the  American  atmosphere.  "What  are  you  going 
to  make  your  future  of,  for  all  your  airs?" 

And  then  I  suppose  I  shall  return  to  crane  my 

5 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

neck  at  the  Flat-Iron  Building  or  the  Times  sky 
scraper,  and  ask  all  that  too,  an  identical  question. 


ii 

CERTAIN  phases  in  the  development 
Philosophical    of  these  prophetic  exercises  one  may 

perhaps  be  permitted  to  trace. 
To  begin  with,  I  remember  that  to  me  in  my  boy 
hood  speculation  about  the  Future  was  a  monstrous 
joke.  Like  most  people  of  my  generation  I  was 
launched  into  life  with  millennial  assumptions.  This 
present  sort  of  thing,  I  believed,  was  going  on  for 
a  time,  interesting  personally  perhaps  but  as  a 
whole  inconsecutive,  and  then — it  might  be  in  my 
lifetime  or  a  little  after  it — there  would  be  trumpets 
and  shoutings  and  celestial  phenomena,  a  battle  of 
Armageddon  and  the  Judgment.  As  I  saw  it,  it 
was  to  be  a  strictly  protestant  and  individualistic 
judgment,  each  soul  upon  its  personal  merits.  To 
talk  about  the  Man  of  the  Year  Million  was  of  course 
in  the  face  of  this  great  conviction,  a  whimsical 
play  of  fancy.  The  Year  Million  was  just  as  im 
possible,  just  as  gayly  nonsensical  as  fairy-land.  .  .  . 
I  was  a  student  of  biology  before  I  realized  that 
this,  my  finite  and  conclusive  End,  at  least  in  the 
material  and  chronological  form,  had  somehow 
vanished  from  the  scheme  of  things.  In  the  place 
of  it  had  come  a  blackness  and  a  vagueness  about 

6 


THE   PROPHETIC   HABIT   OF   MIND 

the  endless  vista  of  years  ahead,  that  was  tremen 
dous — that  terrified.  That  is  a  phase  in  which  lots 
of  educated  people  remain  to  this  day.  "All  this 
scheme  of  things,  life,  force,  destiny  which  began  not 
six  thousand  years,  mark  you,  but  an  infinity  ago, 
that  has  developed  out  of  such  strange  weird  shapes 
and  incredible  first  intentions,  out  of  gaseous  nebulas, 
carboniferous  swamps,  saurian  giantry  and  arboreal 
apes,  is  by  the  same  tokens  to  continue,  developing 
— into  what?"  That  was  the  overwhelming  riddle 
that  came  to  me,  with  that  realization  of  an  End 
averted,  that  has  come  now  to  most  of  our  world. 

The  phase  that  followed  the  first  helpless  stare  of 
the  mind  was  a  wild  effort  to  express  one's  sudden 
apprehension  of  unlimited  possibility.  One  made 
fantastic  exaggerations,  fantastic  inversions  of  all 
recognized  things.  Anything  of  this  sort  might 
come,  anything  of  any  sort.  The  books  about  the 
future  that  followed  the  first  stimulus  of  the  world's 
realization  of  the  implications  of  Darwinian  science, 
have  all  something  of  the  monstrous  experimental 
imaginings  of  children.  I  myself,  in  my  microcos- 
mic  way,  duplicated  the  times.  Almost  the  first 
thing  I  ever  wrote — it  survives  in  an  altered  form 
as  one  of  a  bookful  of  essays, — was  of  this  type; 
"The  Man  of  the  Year  Million,"  was  presented  as  a 
sort  of  pantomime  head  and  a  shrivelled  body,  and 
years  after  that,  the  Time  Machine,  my  first  pub 
lished  book,  ran  in  the  same  vein.  At  that  point, 
at  a  brief  astonished  stare  down  the  vistas  of  time- 

7 


THE    FUTURE    IN   AMERICA 

to-come,  at  something  between  wonder  and  amazed, 
incredulous,  defeated  laughter,  most  people,  I  think, 
stop.  But  those  who  are  doomed  to  the  prophetic 
habit  of  mind  go  on. 

The  next  phase,  the  third  phase,  is  to  shorten  the 
range  of  the  outlook,  to  attempt  something  a  little 
more  proximate  than  the  final  destiny  of  man.  One 
becomes  more  systematic,  one  sets  to  work  to  trace 
the  great  changes  of  the  last  century  or  so,  and  one 
produces  these  in  a  straight  line  and  according  to 
the  rule  of  three.  If  the  maximum  velocity  of  land 
travel  in  1800  was  twelve  miles  an  hour  and  in 
1900  (let  us  say)  sixty  miles  an  hour,  then  one  con 
cludes  that  in  2000  A.D.  it  will  be  three  hundred  miles 
an  hour.  If  the  population  of  America  in  1800 — 
but  I  refrain  from  this  second  instance.  In  that 
fashion  one  got  out  a  sort  of  gigantesque  caricature 
of  the  existing  world,  everything  swollen  to  vast 
proportions  and  massive  beyond  measure.  In  my 
case  that  phase  produced  a  book,  When  the  Sleeper 
Wakes,  in  which,  I  am  told,  by  competent  New- 
Yorkers,  that  I,  starting  with  London,  an  unbiassed 
mind,  this  rule-of -three  method  and  my  otherwise 
unaided  imagination,  produced  something  more 
like  Chicago  than  any  other  place  wherein  righteous 
men  are  likely  to  be  found.  That  I  shall  verify  in 
due  course,  but  my  present  point  is  merely  that  to 
write  such  a  book  is  to  discover  how  thoroughly 
wrong  this  all  too  obvious  method  of  enlarging  the 
present  is. 

8 


THE   PROPHETIC   HABIT   OF   MIND 

One  goes  on  therefore — if  one  is  to  succumb  alto 
gether  to  the  prophetic  habit — to  a  really  "scien 
tific"  attack  upon  the  future.  The  " scientific" 
phase  is  not  final,  but  it  is  far  more  abundantly 
fruitful  than  its  predecessors.  One  attempts  a  rude 
wide  analysis  of  contemporary  history,  one  seeks 
to  clear  and  detach  operating  causes  and  to  work 
them  out,  and  so,  combining  this  necessary  set  of 
consequences  with  that,  to  achieve  a  synthetic  fore 
cast  in  terms  just  as  broad  and  general  and  vague 
as  the  causes  considered  are  few.  I  made,  it  hap 
pens,  an  experiment  in  this  scientific  sort  of  proph 
ecy  in  a  book  called  Anticipations,  and  I  gave 
an  altogether  excessive  exposition  and  defence  of 
it,  I  went  altogether  too  far  in  this  direction,  in  a 
lecture  to  the  Royal  Institution,  "The  Discovery  of 
the  Future,"  that  survives  in  odd  corners  as  a  pam 
phlet,  and  is  to  be  found,  like  a  scrap  of  old  news 
paper  in  the  roof  gutter  of  a  museum,  in  Nature 
(vol.  LXV.,  p.  326)  and  in  the  Smithsonian  Report 
(for  1902).  Within  certain  limits,  however,  I  still 
believe  this  scientific  method  is  sound.  It  gives 
sound  results  in  many  cases,  results  at  any  rate  as 
sound  as  those  one  gets  from  the  "laws"  of  political 
economy;  one  can  claim  it  really  does  effect  a  sort 
of  prophecy  on  the  material  side  of  life. 

For  example,  it  was  quite  obvious  about  1899 
that  invention  and  enterprise  were  very  busy  with 
the  means  of  locomotion,  and  one  could  deduce 
from  that  certain  practically  inevitable  consequences 

9 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

in  the  distribution  of  urban  populations.  With 
easier,  quicker  means  of  getting  about  there  were 
endless  reasons,  hygienic,  social,  economic,  why  peo 
ple  should  move  from  the  town  centres  towards 
their  peripheries,  and  very  few  why  they  should 
not.  The  towns  one  inferred  therefore,  would  get 
slacker,  more  diffused,  the  country-side  more  urban. 
From  that,  from  the  spatial  widening  of  personal 
interests  that  ensued,  one  could  infer  certain  changes 
in  the  spirits  of  local  politics,  and  so  one  went  on  to 
a  number  of  fairly  valid  adumbrations.  Then  again 
starting  from  the  practical  supersession  in  the  long 
run  of  all  unskilled  labor  by  machinery  one  can  work 
out  with  a  pretty  fair  certainty  many  coming  social 
developments,  and  the  broad  trend  of  one  group  of 
influences  at  least  from  the  moral  attitude  of  the 
mass  of  common  people.  In  industry,  in  domestic 
life  again,  one  foresees  a  steady  development  of 
complex  appliances,  demanding,  and  indeed  in  an 
epoch  of  frequently  changing  methods  forcing,  a 
flexible  understanding,  versatility  of  effort,  a  uni 
versal  rising  standard  of  education.  So  too  a  study 
of  military  methods  and  apparatus  convinces  one 
of  the  necessary  transfer  of  power  in  the  coming 
century  from  the  ignorant  and  enthusiastic  masses 
who  made  the  revolutions  of  the  eighteenth  and 
nineteenth  centuries  and  won  Napoleon  his  wars, 
to  any  more  deliberate,  more  intelligent  and  more 
disciplined  class  that  may  possess  an  organized  pur 
pose.  But  where  will  one  find  that  class?  There 

10 


THE    PROPHETIC   HABIT   OF    MIND 

comes  a  question  that  goes  outside  science,  that 
takes  one  at  once  into  a  field  beyond  the  range  of 
the  "scientific"  method  altogether. 

So  long  as  one  adopts  the  assumptions  of  the 
old  political  economist  and  assumes  men  without 
idiosyncrasy,  without  prejudices,  without,  as  peo 
ple  say,  wills  of  their  own,  so  long  as  one  imagines 
a  perfectly  acquiescent  humanity  that  will  always 
in  the  long  run  under  pressure  liquefy  and  stream 
along  the  line  of  least  resistance  to  its  own  material 
advantage,  the  business  of  prophecy  is  easy.  But 
from  the  first  I  felt  distrust  for  that  facility  in 
prophesying,  I  perceived  that  always  there  lurked 
something,  an  incalculable  opposition  to  these 
mechanically  conceived  forces,  in  law,  in  usage  and 
prejudice,  in  the  poietic  power  of  exceptional  in 
dividual  men.  I  discovered  for  myself  over  again, 
the  inseparable  nature  of  the  two  functions  of  the 
prophet.  In  my  Anticipations,  for  example,  I  had 
intended  simply  to  work  out  and  foretell,  and  be 
fore  I  had  finished  I  was  in  a  fine  full  blast  of 
exhortation.  .  .  . 

That  by  an  easy  transition  brought  me  to  the 
last  stage  in  the  life  history  of  the  prophetic  mind, 
as  it  is  at  present  known  to  me.  One  comes  out  on 
the  other  side  of  the  " scientific"  method,  into  the 
large  temperance,  the  valiant  inconclusiveness,  the 
released  creativeness  of  philosophy.  Much  may  be 
foretold  as  certain,  much  more  as  possible,  but  the 
last  decisions  and  the  greatest  decisions,  lie  in  the 


THE   FUTURE    IN   AMERICA 

hearts  and  wills  of  unique  incalculable  men.  With 
them  we  have  to  deal  as  our  ultimate  reality  in  all 
these  matters,  and  our  methods  have  to  be  not 
"scientific"  at  all  for  all  the  greater  issues,  the 
humanly  important  issues,  but  critical,  literary, 
even  if  you  will — artistic.  Here  insight  is  of  more 
account  than  induction  and  the  perception  of  fine 
tones  than  the  counting  of  heads.  vScience  deals 
with  necessity  and  necessity  is  here  but  the  firm 
ground  on  which  our  freedom  goes.  One  passes 
from  affairs  of  predestination  to  affairs  of  free  will. 
This  discovery  spread  at  once  beyond  the  field 
of  prophesying.  The  end,  the  aim,  the  test  of 
science,  as  a  model  man  understands  the  word,  is 
foretelling  by  means  of  "laws,"  and  my  error  in 
attempting  a  complete  "scientific"  forecast  of 
human  affairs  arose  in  too  careless  an  assent  to  the 
ideas  about  me,  and  from  accepting  uncritically 
such  claims  as  that  history  should  be  "scientific," 
and  that  economics  and  sociology  (for  example) 
are  "sciences."  Directly  one  gauges  the  fuller  im 
plications  of  that  uniqueness  of  individuals  Darwin's 
work  has  so  permanently  illuminated,  one  passes 
beyond  that.  The  ripened  prophet  realizes  Scho 
penhauer — as  indeed  I  find  Professor  Munsterberg 
saying.  "The  deepest  sense  of  human  affairs  is 
reached,"  he  writes,  "when  we  consider  them  not 
as  appearances  but  as  decisions."  There  one  has 
the  same  thing  coming  to  meet  one  from  the  psy 
chological  side.  .  .  . 

12 


THE   PROPHETIC   HABIT   OF   MIND 

But  my  present  business  isn't  to  go  into  this 
shadowy,  metaphysical  foundation  world  on  which 
our  thinking  rests,  but  to  the  brightly  lit  overworld 
of  America.  This  philosophical  excursion  is  set 
here  just  to  prepare  the  reader  quite  frankly  for 
speculations  and  to  disabuse  his  mind  of  the  idea 
that  in  writing  of  the  Future  in  America  I'm  going 
to  write  of  houses  a  hundred  stories  high  and  flying- 
machines  in  warfare  and  things  like  that.  I  am 
not  going  to  America  to  work  a  pretentious  horo 
scope,  to  discover  a  Destiny,  but  to  find  out  what 
I  can  of  what  must  needs  make  that  Destiny, — a 
great  nation's  Will. 

in 

THE  material  factors  in  a  nation's 
TAenSa°f  future  are  subordinate  factors,  they 
present  advantages,  such  as  the  easy 
access  of  the  English  to  coal  and  the  sea,  or  dis 
advantages,  such  as  the  ice-bound  seaboard  of  the 
Russians,  but  these  are  the  circumstances  and  not 
necessarily  the  rulers  of  its  fate.  The  essential 
factor  in  the  destiny  of  a  nation,  as  of  a  man  and 
of  mankind,  lies  in  the  form  of  its  will  and  in  the 
quality  and  quantity  of  its  will.  The  drama  of  a 
nation's  future,  as  of  a  man's,  lies  in  this  conflict  of 
its  will  with  what  would  else  be  "scientifically" 
predictable,  materially  inevitable.  If  the  man,  if 
the  nation  was  an  automaton  fitted  with  good 

T3 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

average  motives,  so  and  so,  one  could  say  exactly, 
would  be  done.  It's  just  where  the  thing  isn't 
automatic  that  our  present  interest  comes  in. 

I  might  perhaps  reverse  the  order  of  the  three 
aspects  of  will  I  have  named,  for  manifestly  where 
the  quantity  of  will  is  small,  it  matters  nothing  what 
the  form  or  quality.  The  man  or  the  people  that 
wills  feebly  is  the  sport  of  every  circumstance,  and 
there  if  anywhere  the  scientific  method  holds  truest 
or  even  altogether  true.  Do  geographical  positions 
or  mineral  resources  make  for  riches?  Then  such 
a  people  will  grow  insecurely  and  disastrously 
rich.  Is  an  abundant  prolific  life  at  a  low  level  in 
dicated?  They  will  pullulate  and  suffer.  If  cir 
cumstances  make  for  a  choice  between  comfort  and 
reproduction,  your  feeble  people  will  dwindle  and 
pass ;  if  war,  if  conquest  tempt  them  then  they  will 
turn  from  all  preoccupations  and  follow  the  drums. 
Little  things  provoke  their  unstable  equilibrium, 
to  hostility,  to  forgiveness.  .  .  . 

And  be  it  noted  that  the  quantity  of  will  in  a 
nation  is  not  necessarily  determined  by  adding  up 
the  wills  of  all  its  people.  I  am  told,  and  I  am  dis 
posed  to  believe  it,  that  the  Americans  of  the  United 
States  are  a  people  of  great  individual  force  of  will, 
the  clear  strong  faces  of  many  young  Americans, 
something  almost  Roman  in  the  faces  of  their  states 
men  and  politicians,  a  distinctive  quality  I  detect 
in  such  Americans  as  I  have  met,  a  quality  of  sharp 
ly  cut  determination  even  though  it  be  only  about 

14 


THE   PROPHETIC   HABIT   OF   MIND 

details  and  secondary  things,  that  one  must  rouse 
one's  self  to  meet,  inclines  me  to  give  a  provisional 
credit  to  that,  but  how  far  does  all  this  possible  will- 
force  aggregate  to  a  great  national  purpose? — what 
algebraically  does  it  add  up  to  when  this  and  that 
have  cancelled  each  other?  That  may  be  a  differ 
ent  thing  altogether. 

And  next  to  this  net  quantity  of  will  a  nation  or 
people  may  possess,  come  the  questions  of  its  qual 
ity,  its  flexibility,  its  consciousness  and  intellectual 
ity.  A  nation  may  be  full  of  will  and  yet  inflexibly 
and  disastrously  stupid  in  the  expression  of  that 
will.  There  was  probably  more  will-power,  more 
haughty  and  determined  self-assertion  in  the  young 
bull  that  charged  the  railway  engine  than  in  several 
regiments  of  men,  but  it  was  after  all  a  low  quality 
of  will  with  no  method  but  a  violent  and  injudicious 
directness,  and  in  the  end  it  was  suicidal  and  futile. 
There  again  is  the  substance  for  ramifying  Enquiries. 
How  subtle,  how  collected  and  patient,  how  far 
capable  of  a  long  plan,  is  this  American  nation? 
Suppose  it  has  a  will  so  powerful  and  with  such  re 
sources  that  whatever  simple  end  may  be  attained 
by  rushing  upon  it  is  America's  for  the  asking,  there 
still  remains  the  far  more  important  question  of  the 
ends  that  are  not  obvious,  that  are  intricate  and 
complex  and  not  to  be  won  by  booms  and  cata 
clysms  of  effort. 

An  Englishman  comes  to  think  that  most  of  the 
permanent  and  precious  things  for  which  a  nation's 


THE    FUTURE    IN   AMERICA 

effort  goes  are  like  that,  and  here  too  I  have  an  open 
mind  and  unsatisfied  curiosities. 

And  lastly  there  is  the  form  of  the  nation's  pur 
pose.  I  have  been  reading  what  I  can  find  about 
that  in  books  for  some  time,  and  now  I  want  to 
cross  over  the  Atlantic,  more  particularly  for  that, 
to  question  more  or  less  openly  certain  Americans, 
not  only  men  and  women,  but  the  mute  expressive 
presences  of  house  and  appliance,  of  statue,  flag 
and  public  building,  and  the  large  collective  visages 
of  crowds,  what  it  is  all  up  to,  what  it  thinks  it  is 
all  after,  how  far  it  means  to  escape  or  improve 
upon  its  purely  material  destinies?  I  want  over 
there  to  find  whatever  consciousness  or  vague  con 
sciousness  of  a  common  purpose  there  may  be, 
what  is  their  Vision,  their  American  Utopia,  how 
much  will  there  is  shaping  to  attain  it,  how  much 
capacity  goes  with  the  will — what,  in  short,  there  is 
in  America,  over  and  above  the  mere  mechanical 
consequences  of  scattering  multitudes  of  energetic 
Europeans  athwart  a  vast  healthy,  productive  and 
practically  empty  continent  in  the  temperate  zone. 
There  you  have  the  terms  of  reference  of  an  enquiry, 
that  is  I  admit  (as  Mr.  Morgan  Richards  the  emi 
nent  advertisement  agent  would  say),  "mammoth 
in  character." 

The  American  reader  may  very  reasonably  in 
quire  at  this  point  why  an  Englishman  does  not 
begin  with  the  future  of  his  own  country.  The 
answer  is  that  this  particular  one  has  done  so,  and 

16 


THE    PROPHETIC   HABIT   OF   MIND 

that  in  many  ways  he  has  found  his  intimacy  and 
proximity  a  disadvantage.  One  knows  too  much 
of  the  things  that  seem  to  matter  and  that  ulti 
mately  don't,  one  is  full  of  misleading  individual 
instances  intensely  seen,  one  can't  see  the  wood  for 
the  trees.  One  comes  to  America  at  last,  not  only 
with  the  idea  of  seeing  America,  but  with  some 
thing  more  than  an  incidental  hope  of  getting  one's 
own  England  there  in  the  distance  and  as  a  whole, 
for  the  first  time  in  one's  life.  And  the  problem  of 
America,  from  this  side  anyhow,  has  an  air  of  being 
simpler.  For  all  the  Philippine  adventure  her 
future  still  seems  to  lie  on  the  whole  compactly  in 
one  continent,  and  not  as  ours  is,  dispersed  round 
and  about  the  habitable  globe,  strangely  entangled 
with  India,  with  Japan,  with  Africa  and  with  the 
great  antagonism  the  Germans  force  upon  us  at 
our  doors.  Moreover  one  cannot  look  ten  years 
ahead  in  England,  without  glancing  across  the 
Atlantic.  "There  they  are,"  we  say  to  one  an 
other,  "those  Americans!  They  speak  our  lan 
guage,  read  our  books,  give  us  books,  share  our 
mind.  What  we  think  still  goes  into  their  heads 
in  a  measure,  and  their  thoughts  run  through  our 
brains.  What  will  they  be  up  to?" 

Our  future  is  extraordinarily  bound  up  in  Ameri 
ca's  and  in  a  sense  dependent  upon  it.  It  is  not 
that  we  dream  very  much  of  political  reunions  of 
Anglo  Saxondom  and  the  like.  So  long  as  we 
British  retain  our  wide  and  accidental  sprawl  of 


THE    FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

empire  about  the  earth  we  cannot  expect  or  desire 
the  Americans  to  share  our  stresses  and  entangle 
ments.  Our  Empire  has  its  own  adventurous  and 
perilous  outlook.  But  our  civilization  is  a  differ 
ent  thing  from  our  Empire,  a  thing  that  reaches 
out  further  into  the  future,  that  will  be  going  on 
changed  beyond  recognition.  Because  of  our  com 
mon  language,  of  our  common  traditions,  Americans 
are  a  part  of  our  community,  are  becoming  indeed 
the  larger  part  of  our  community  of  thought  and 
feeling  and  outlook — in  a  sense  far  more  intimate 
than  any  link  we  have  with  Hindoo  or  Copt  or 
Cingalese.  A  common  Englishman  has  an  almost 
pathetic  pride  and  sense  of  proprietorship  in  the 
States;  he  is  fatally  ready  to  fall  in  with  the  idea 
that  two  nations  that  share  their  past,  that  still, 
a  little  restively,  share  one  language,  may  even 
contrive  to  share  an  infinitely  more  interesting 
future.  Even  if  he  does  not  chance  to  be  an 
American  now,  his  grandson  may  be.  America  is 
his  inheritance,  his  reserved  accumulating  invest 
ment.  In  that  sense  indeed  America  belongs  to 
the  whole  western  world;  all  Europe  owns  her 
promise,  but  to  the  Englishman  the  sense  of  par 
ticipation  is  intense.  "We  did  it,"  he  will  tell  of 
the  most  American  of  achievements,  of  the  settle 
ment  of  the  middle  west  for  example,  and  this  is 
so  far  justifiable  that  numberless  men,  myself  in 
cluded,  are  Englishmen,  Australian,  New-Zealand- 

18 


THE   PROPHETIC   HABIT   OF   MIND 

ers,  Canadians,  instead  of  being  Americans,  by  the 
merest  accidents  of  life.  My  father  still  possesses 
the  stout  oak  box  he  had  had  made  to  emigrate 
withal,  everything  was  arranged  that  would  have 
got  me  and  my  brothers  born  across  the  ocean,  and 
only  the  coincidence  of  a  business  opportunity  and 
an  illness  of  my  mother's,  arrested  that.  It  was  so 
near  a  thing  as  that  with  me,  which  prevents  my 
blood  from  boiling  with  patriotic  indignation  in 
stead  of  patriotic  solicitude  at  the  frequent  sight  of 
red- coats  as  I  see  them  from  my  study  window  go 
ing  to  and  fro  to  Shorncliffe  camp. 

Well  I  learn  from  Professor  Miinsterberg  how 
vain  my  sense  of  proprietorship  is,  but  still  this 
much  of  it  obstinately  remains,  that  I  will  at  any 
rate  look  at  the  American  future. 

By  the  accidents  that  delayed  that  box  it  comes 
about  that  if  I  want  to  see  what  America  is  up  to, 
I  have  among  other  things  to  buy  a  Baedeker  and 
a  steamer  ticket  and  fill  up  the  inquiring  blanks 
in  this  remarkable  document  before  me,  the  long 
string  of  questions  that  begins  :— 

"Are  you  a  Polygamist ?" 

"Are  you  an  Anarchist?" 

Here  I  gather  is  one  little  indication  of  the  great 
will  I  am  going  to  study.  It  would  seem  that  the 
United  States  of  America  regard  Anarchy  and 
Polygamy  with  aversion,  regard  indeed  Anarchists 
and  Polygamists  as  creatures  unfit  to  mingle  with 
the  already  very  various  eighty  million  of  citizens 

19 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

who  constitute  their  sovereign  powers,  and  on  the 
other  hand  hold  these  creatures  so  inflexibly  hon 
orable  as  certainly  to  tell  these  damning  truths 
about  themselves  in  this  matter.  .  .  . 

It's  a  little  odd.  One  has  a  second  or  so  of  doubt 
about  the  quality  of  that  particular  manifestation 
of  will. 


CHAPTER  II 

MATERIAL  PROGRESS 
(On  the  "  Carmania  "  going  Americanward) 


WHEN  one  talks  to  an  American  of 
Ameceratitudes  n^s  national  purpose  he  seems  a  little 
at  a  loss;  if  one  speaks  of  his  national 
destiny,  he  responds  with  alacrity.  I  make  this 
generalization  on  the  usual  narrow  foundations,  but 
so  the  impression  comes  to  me. 

Until  this  present  generation,  indeed  until  within 
a  couple  of  decades,  it  is  not  very  evident  that 
Americans  did  envisage  any  national  purpose  at 
all,  except  in  so  far  as  there  was  a  certain  solicitude 
not  to  be  cheated  out  of  an  assured  destiny.  A  sort 
of  optimistic  fatalism  possessed  them.  They  had, 
and  mostly  it  seems  they  still  have,  a  tremendous 
sense  of  sustained  and  assured  growth,  and  it  is 
not  altogether  untrue  that  one  is  told — I  have  been 
told — such  things  as  that  "America  is  a  great 
country,  sir,"  that  its  future  is  gigantic  and  that 
it  is  already  (and  going  to  be  more  and  more  so)  the 
greatest  country  on  earth. 

21 


THE   FUTURE    IN   AMERICA 

I  am  not  the  sort  of  Englishman  who  questions 
that.  I  do  so  regard  that  much  as  obvious  and 
true  that  it  seems  to  me  even  a  little  undignified, 
as  well  as  a  little  overbearing,  for  Americans  to  in 
sist  upon  it  so ;  I  try  to  go  on  as  soon  as  possible  to 
the  question  just  how  my  interlocutor  shapes  that 
gigantic  future  and  what  that  world  predominance 
is  finally  to  do  for  us  in  England  and  all  about  the 
world.  So  far,  I  must  insist,  I  haven't  found  any 
thing  like  an  idea.  I  have  looked  for  it  in  books, 
in  papers,  in  speeches  and  now  I  am  going  to  look 
for  it  in  America.  At  the  most  I  have  found  vague 
imaginings  that  correspond  to  that  first  or  mon 
strous  stage  in  the  scheme  of  prophetic  development 
I  sketched  in  my  opening. 

There  is  often  no  more  than  a  volley  of  rhetorical 
blank- cartridge.  So  empty  is  it  of  all  but  sound 
that  I  have  usually  been  constrained  by  civility 
from  going  on  to  a  third  enquiry;— 

"And  what  are  you,  sir,  doing  in  particular,  to 
assist  and  enrich  this  magnificent  and  quite  in 
definable  Destiny  of  which  you  so  evidently  feel 
yourself  a  part?"  .  .  . 

That  seems  to  be  really  no  unjust  rendering  of 
the  conscious  element  of  the  American  outlook  as 
one  finds  it,  for  example,  in  these  nice-looking  and 
pleasant  -  mannered  fellow  -  passengers  upon  the 
Carmania  upon  whom  I  fasten  with  leading  ques 
tions  and  experimental  remarks.  One  exception 
I  discover — a  pleasant  New  York  clubman  who  has 

22 


MATERIAL   PROGRESS 

doubts  of  this  and  that.  The  discipline  and  sense 
of  purpose  in  Germany  has  laid  hold  upon  him.  He 
seems  to  be,  in  contrast  with  his  fellow-countrymen, 
almost  pessimistically  aware  that  the  American 
ship  of  state  is  after  all  a  mortal  ship  and  liable  to 
leakages.  There  are  certain  problems  and  dangers 
he  seems  to  think  that  may  delay,  perhaps  even 
prevent,  an  undamaged  arrival  in  that  predestined 
port,  that  port  too  resplendent  for  the  eye  to  rest 
upon ;  a  Chinese  peril,  he  thinks  has  not  been  finally 
dealt  with,  "race  suicide"  is  not  arrested  for  all  that 
it  is  scolded  in  a  most  valiant  and  virile  manner, 
and  there  are  adverse  possibilities  in  the  immigrant, 
in  the  black,  the  socialist,  against  which  he  sees  no 
guarantee.  He  sees  huge  danger  in  the  develop 
ment  and  organization  of  the  new  finance  and  no 
clear  promise  of  a  remedy.  He  finds  the  closest 
parallel  between  the  American  Republic  and  Rome 
before  the  coming  of  Imperialism.  But  these  other 
Americans  have  no  share  in  his  pessimisms.  They 
may  confess  to  as  much  as  he  does  in  the  way  of 
dangers,  admit  there  are  occasions  for  calking,  a 
need  of  stopping  quite  a  number  of  possibilities  if 
the  American  Idea  is  to  make  its  triumphant  entry 
at  last  into  that  port  of  blinding  accomplishment, 
but,  apart  from  a  few  necessary  preventive  pro 
posals,  I  do  not  perceive  any  extensive  sense  of  any 
thing  whatever  to  be  done,  anything  to  be  shaped 
and  thought  out  and  made  in  the  sense  of  a  national 
determination  to  a  designed  and  specified  end. 
3  23 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

II 

THERE  are,  one  must  admit,  tremen- 
Apryo™?e0ssof  dous  justifications  for  the  belief  in  a 
sort  of  automatic  ascent  of  American 
things  to  unprecedented  magnificences,  an  ascent 
so  automatic  that  indeed  one  needn't  bother  in  the 
slightest  to  keep  the  whole  thing  going.  For  ex 
ample,  consider  this,  last  year's  last- word  in  ocean 
travel  in  which  I  am  crossing,  the  Carmania  with 
its  unparalleled  steadfastness,  its  racing,  tireless 
great  turbines,  its  vast  population  of  3244  souls! 
It  has  on  the  whole  a  tremendous  effect  of  having 
come  by  fate  and  its  own  forces.  One  forgets  that 
any  one  planned  it,  much  of  it  indeed  has  so  much 
the  quality  of  moving,  as  the  planets  move,  in  the 
very  nature  of  things.  You  go  aft  and  see  the 
wake  tailing  away  across  the  blue  ridges,  you  go  for 
ward  and  see  the  cleft  water,  lift  protestingly,  roll 
back  in  an  indignant  crest,  own  itself  beaten  and  go 
pouring  by  in  great  foaming  waves  on  either  hand, 
you  see  nothing,  you  hear  nothing  of  the  toiling 
engines,  the  reeking  stokers,  the  effort  and  the 
stress  below;  you  beat  west  and  west,  as  the  sun 
does  and  it  might  seem  with  nearly  the  same  in 
dependence  of  any  living  man's  help  or  opposition. 
Equally  so  does  it  seem  this  great,  gleaming,  con 
fident  thing  of  power  and  metal  came  inevitably 
out  of  the  past  and  will  lead  on  to  still  more  shining, 
still  swifter  and  securer  monsters  in  the  future. 

24 


MATERIAL   PROGRESS 

One  sees  in  the  perspective  of  history,  first  the 
little  cockle-shells  of  Columbus,  the  comings  and 
goings  of  the  precarious  Tudor  adventurers,  the 
slow  uncertain  shipping  of  colonial  days.  Says  Sir 
George  Trevelyan  in  the  opening  of  his  American 
Revolution,  that  then  —  it  is  still  not  a  century 
and  a  half  ago! — 

"a  man  bound  for  New  York,  as  he  sent  his  luggage  on 
board  at  Bristol,  would  willingly  have  compounded  for 
a  voyage  lasting  as  many  weeks  as  it  now  lasts  days.  .  .  . 
Adams,  during  the  height  of  the  war,  hurrying  to  France 
in  the  finest  frigate  Congress  could  place  at  his  disposal 
.  .  .  could  make  not  better  speed  than  five  and  forty  days 
between  Boston  and  Bordeaux.  Lord  Carlisle  .  .  .  was  six 
weeks  between  port  and  port;  tossed  by  gales  which  in 
flicted  on  his  brother  Commissioners  agonies  such  as  he  for 
bore  to  make  a  matter  of  joke  even  to  George  Selwyn.  .  .  . 
How  humbler  individuals  fared.  .  .  .  They  would  be  kept 
waiting  weeks  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  water  for  a  full 
complement  of  passengers  and  weeks  more  for  a  fair  wind, 
and  then  beating  across  in  a  badly  found  tub  with  a  cargo 
of  millstones  and  old  iron  rolling  about  below,  they  thought 
themselves  lucky  if  they  came  into  harbor  a  month  after 
their  private  store  of  provisions  had  run  out  and  carrying 
a  budget  of  news  as  stale  as  the  ship's  provisions." 

Even  in  the  time  of  Dickens  things  were  by  no 
measure  more  than  half  -  way  better.  I  have  with 
me  to  enhance  my  comfort  by  this  aided  retro 
spect,  his  American  Notes.  His  crossing  lasted 
eighteen  days  and  his  boat  was  that  "far-famed 
American  steamer,"  the  Britannia  (the  first  of  the 
long  succession  of  Cunarders,  of  which  this  Carmania 

25 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

is  the  latest) ;  his  return  took  fifty  days,  and  was  a 
jovial  home-coming  under  sail.  It's  the  journey 
out  gives  us  our  contrast.  He  had  the  "state-room " 
of  the  period  and  very  unhappy  he  was  in  it,  as  he 
testifies  in  a  characteristically  mounting  passage. 


"That  this  state-room  had  been  specially  engaged  for 
'Charles  Dickens,  Esquire,  and  Lady,'  was  rendered  suf 
ficiently  clear  even  to  my  scared  intellect  by  a  very  small 
manuscript,  announcing  the  fact,  which  was  pinned  on  a 
very  flat  quilt,  covering  a  very  thin  mattress,  spread  like 
a  surgical  plaster  on  a  most  inaccessible  shelf.  But  that 
this  was  the  state-room,  concerning  which  Charles  Dickens, 
Esquire,  and  Lady,  had  held  daily  and  nightly  conferences 
for  at  least  four  months  preceding;  that  this  could  by  any 
possibility  be  that  small  snug  chamber  of  the  imagination, 
which  Charles  Dickens,  Esquire,  with  the  spirit  of  prophecy 
strong  upon  him,  had  always  foretold  would  contain  at 
least  one  little  sofa,  and  which  his  Lady,  with  a  modest  and 
yet  most  magnificent  sense  of  its  limited  dimensions,  had 
from  the  first  opined  would  not  hold  more  than  two  enor 
mous  portmanteaus  in  some  odd  corner  out  of  sight  (port 
manteaus  which  could  now  no  more  be  got  in  at  the  door, 
not  to  say  stowed  away,  than  a  giraffe  could  be  persuaded 
or  forced  into  a  flower-pot) :  that  this  utterly  impracticable, 
thoroughly  preposterous  box,  had  the  remotest  reference 
to,  or  connection  with,  those  chaste  and  pretty  bowers, 
sketched  in  a  masterly  hand,  in  the  highly  varnished, 
lithographic  plan,  hanging  up  in  the  agent's  counting- 
house  in  the  City  of  London:  that  this  room  of  state,  in 
short,  could  be  anything  but  a  pleasant  fiction  and  cheer 
ful  jest  of  the  Captain's,  invented  and  put  in  practice  for 
the  better  relish  and  enjoyment  of  the  real  state-room 
presently  to  be  disclosed :  these  were  truths  which  I  really 
could  not  bring  my  mind  at  all  to  bear  upon  or  compre 
hend." 

26 


MATERIAL   PROGRESS 

So  he  precludes  his  two  weeks  and  a  half  of  vile 
weather  in  this  paddle  boat  of  the  middle  ages  (she 
carried  a  "  formidable "  multitude  of  no  less  than 
eighty-six  saloon  passengers)  and  goes  on  to  de 
scribe  such  experiences  as  this; 

"About  midnight  we  shipped  a  sea,  which  forced  its  way 
through  the  skylights,  burst  open  the  doors  above,  and 
came  raging  and  roaring  down  into  the  ladies'  cabin,  to 
the  unspeakable  consternation  of  my  wife  and  a  little 
Scotch  lady.  .  .  .  They,  and  the  handmaid  before  men 
tioned,  being  in  such  ecstacies  of  fear  that  I  scarcely  knew 
what  to  do  with  them,  I  naturally  bethought  myself  of 
some  restorative  or  comfortable  cordial;  and  nothing  bet 
ter  occurring  to  me,  at  the  moment,  than  hot  brandy-and- 
water,  I  procured  a  tumblerful  without  delay.  It  being 
impossible  to  stand  or  sit  without  holding  on,  they  were 
all  heaped  together  in  one  corner  of  a  long  sofa — a  fixture 
extending  entirely  across  the  cabin — where  they  clung  to 
each  other  in  momentary  expectation  of  being  drowned. 
When  I  approached  this  place  with  my  specific,  and  was 
about  to  administer  it  with  many  consolatory  expressions, 
to  the  nearest  sufferer,  what  was  my  dismay  to  see  them 
all  roll  slowly  down  to  the  other  end !  and  when  I  staggered 
to  that  end,  and  held  out  the  glass  once  more,  how  im 
mensely  baffled  were  my  good  intentions  by  the  ship  giving 
another  lurch,  and  their  rolling  back  again!  I  suppose  I 
dodged  them  up  and  down  this  sofa,  for  at  least  a  quarter 
of  an  hour,  without  reaching  them  once;  and  by  the  time 
I  did  catch  them,  the  brandy-and-water  was  diminished, 
by  constant  spilling,  to  a  teaspoonful.  To  complete  the 
group,  it  is  necessary  to  recognize  in  this  disconcerted 
dodger,  an  individual  very  pale  from  sea-sickness,  who  had 
shaved  his  beard  and  brushed  his  hair  last  at  Liverpool ;  and 
whose  only  articles  of  dress  (linen  not  included)  were  a  pair  of 
dreadnought  trousers;  a  blue  jacket,  formerly  admired  upon 
the  Thames  at  Richmond;  no  stockings;  and  one  slipper." 

27 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

It  gives  one  a  momentary  sense  of  superiority  to 
the  great  master  to  read  that.  One  surveys  one's 
immediate  surroundings  and  compares  them  with 
his.  One  says  almost  patronizingly:  "Poor  old 
Dickens,  you  know,  really  did  have  too  awful  a 
time!"  The  waves  are  high  now,  and  getting 
higher,  dark -blue  waves  foam-crested;  the  waves 
haven't  altered — except  relatively — but  one  isn't 
even  sea-sick.  At  the  most  there  are  squeamish 
moments  for  the  weaker  brethren.  One  looks  down 
on  these  long  white-crested  undulations  thirty  feet 
or  so  of  rise  and  fall,  as  we  look  down  the  side  of  a 
sky-scraper  into  a  tumult  in  the  street. 

We  displace  thirty  thousand  tons  of  water  in 
stead  of  twelve  hundred,  we  can  carry  521  first  and 
second  class  passengers,  a  crew  of  463,  and  2260 
emigrants  below.  .  .  . 

We're  a  city  rather  than  a  ship,  our  funnels  go 
up  over  the  height  of  any  reasonable  church  spire, 
and  you  need  walk  the  main-deck  from  end  to  end 
and  back  only  four  times  to  do  a  mile.  Any  one 
who  has  been  to  London  and  seen  Trafalgar  Square 
will  get  our  dimensions  perfectly,  when  he  realizes 
that  we  should  only  squeeze  into  that  finest  site  in 
Europe,  diagonally,  dwarfing  the  National  Gallery, 
St.  Martin's  Church,  hotels  and  every  other  build 
ing  there  out  of  existence,  our  funnels  towering  five 
feet  higher  than  Nelson  on  his  column.  As  one 
looks  down  on  it  all  from  the  boat-deck  one  has  a 
social  microcosm,  we  could  set  up  as  a  small  modern 

28 


MATERIAL  PROGRESS 

country  and  renew  civilization  even  if  the  rest  of 
the  world  was  destroyed.  We've  the  plutocracy 
up  here,  there  is  a  middle  class  on  the  second- 
class  deck  and  forward  a  proletariat — the  proles 
much  in  evidence — complete.  It's  possible  to  go 
slumming  aboard.  .  .  .  We  have  our  daily  paper, 
too,  printed  aboard,  and  all  the  latest  news  by 
marconigram.  .  .  . 

Never  was  anything  of  this  sort  before,  never. 
Caligula's  shipping  it  is  true  (unless  it  was  Con- 
stantine's)  did,  as  Mr.  Cecil  Torr  testifies,  hold  a 
world  record  until  the  nineteenth  century  and  he 
quotes  Pliny  for  thirteen  hundred  tons — outdoing 
the  Britannia — and  Moschion  for  cabins  and  baths 
and  covered  vine-shaded  walks  and  plants  in  pots. 
But  from  1840  onward,  we  have  broken  away  into 
a  new  scale  for  life.  This  Carmania  isn't  the  largest 
ship  nor  the  finest,  nor  is  it  to  be  the  last.  Greater 
ships  are  to  follow  and  greater.  The  scale  of  size, 
the  scale  of  power,  the  speed  and  dimensions  of  things 
about  us  alter  remorselessly — to  some  limit  we  cannot 
at  present  descry. 

in 

IT  is  the  development  of  such  things 
Is  ¥n°e8vfisbie  ?     as  this,  it  is   this  dramatically  abbre 
viated  perspective  from  those  pre-Ref- 
ormation  caravels  to  the  larger,  larger,  larger  of  the 
present  vessels,  one  must  blame  for  one's  illusions. 

29 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

One  is  led  unawares  to  believe  that  this  something 
called  Progress  is  a  natural  and  necessary  and 
secular  process,  going  on  without  the  definite  will 
of  man,  carrying  us  on  quite  independently  of  us; 
one  is  led  unawares  to  forget  that  it  is  after  all  from 
the  historical  point  of  view  only  a  sudden  universal 
jolting  forward  in  history,  an  affair  of  two  centuries 
at  most,  a  process  for  the  continuance  of  which  we 
have  no  sort  of  guarantee.  Most  western  Euro 
peans  have  this  delusion  of  automatic  progress  in 
things  badly  enough,  but  with  Americans  it  seems 
to  be  almost  fundamental.  It  is  their  theory  of 
the  Cosmos  and  they  no  more  think  of  inquir 
ing  into  the  sustaining  causes  of  the  progressive 
movement  than  they  would  into  the  character 
of  the  stokers  hidden  away  from  us  in  this 
great  thing  somewhere  —  the  officers  alone  know 
where. 

I  am  happy  to  find  this  blind  confidence  very  well 
expressed  for  example  in  an  illustrated  magazine 
article  by  Mr.  Edgar  Saltus,  "New  York  from  the 
Flat-iron,"  that  a  friend  has  put  in  my  hand  to  pre 
pare  me  for  the  wonders  to  come.  Mr.  Saltus  writes 
with  an  eloquent  joy  of  his  vision  of  Broadway  be 
low,  Broadway  that  is  now  "barring  trade-routes, 
the  largest  commercial  stretch  on  this  planet." 
So  late  as  Dickens 's  visit  it  was  scavenged  by  rov 
ing  untended  herds  of  gaunt,  brown,  black-blotched 
pigs.  He  writes  of  lower  Fifth  Avenue  and  upper 
Fifth  Avenue,  of  Madison  Square  and  its  tower,  of 

30 


MATERIAL   PROGRESS 

sky-scrapers  and  sky-scrapers  and  sky-scrapers  round 
and  about  the  horizon.  (I  am  to  have  a  tremendous 
view  of  them  to-morrow  as  we  steam  up  from  the 
Narrows.)  And  thus  Mr.  Saltus  proceeds, — 

1 '  As  you  lean  and  gaze  from  the  toppest  floors  on  houses 
below,  which  from  those  floors  seem  huts,  it  may  occur 
to  you  that  precisely  as  these  huts  were  once  regarded  as 
supreme  achievements,  so,  one  of  these  days,  from  other 
and  higher  floors,  the  Flat-iron  may  seem  a  hut  itself. 
Evolution  has  not  halted.  Undiscernibly  but  indefatiga- 
bly,  always  it  is  progressing.  Its  final  term  is  not  exist 
ing  buildings,  nor  in  existing  man.  If  humanity  sprang 
from  gorillas,  from  humanity  gods  shall  proceed." 

The  rule  of  three  in  excelsis ! 

"The  story  of  Olympus  is  merely  a  tale  of  what  might 
have  been.  That  which  might  have  been  may  yet  come 
to  pass.  Even  now  could  the  old  divinities,  hushed  for- 
evermore,  awake,  they  would  be  perplexed  enough  to  see 
how  mortals  have  exceeded  them.  ...  In  Fifth  Avenue 
inns  they  could  get  fairer  fare  than  ambrosia,  and  behold 
women  beside  whom  Venus  herself  would  look  provincial 
and  Juno  a  frump.  The  spectacle  of  electricity  tamed  and 
domesticated  would  surprise  them  not  a  little,  the  elevated 
quite  as  much,  the  Flat-iron  still  more.  At  sight  of  the 
latter  they  would  recall  the  Titans  with  whom  once  they 
warred,  and  sink  to  their  sun-red  seas  outfaced. 

"In  this  same  measure  we  have  succeeded  in  exceeding 
them,  so  will  posterity  surpass  what  we  have  done.  Evo 
lution  may  be  slow,  it  achieved  an  unrecognized  advance 
when  it  devised  buildings  such  as  this.  It  is  demonstrable 
that  small  rooms  breed  small  thoughts.  It  will  be  demon 
strable  that,  as  buildings  ascend,  so  do  ideas.  It  is  mental 
progress  that  sky-scrapers  engender.  From  these  parturi- 


THE   FUTURE   IN  AMERICA 

tions  gods  may  really  proceed — beings,  that  is,  who,  could 
we  remain  long  enough  to  see  them,  would  regard  us  as 
we  regard  the  apes.  ..." 

Mr.  Saltus  writes,  I  think,  with  a  very  typical 
American  accent.  Most  Americans  think  like  that 
and  all  of  them  I  fancy  feel  like  it.  Just  in  that 
spirit  a  later -empire  Roman  might  have  written 
apropos  the  gigantic  new  basilica  of  Constantine 
the  Great  (who  was  also,  one  recalls,  a  record-breaker 
in  ship  -  building)  and  have  compared  it  with  the 
straitened  proportions  of  Caesar's  Forum  and  the 
meagre  relics  of  republican  Rome.  So  too  (dbsit 
omen)  he  might  have  swelled  into  prophecy  and 
sounded  the  true  modern  note. 

One  hears  that  modern  note  everywhere  nowa 
days  where  print  spreads,  but  from  America  with 
fewer  undertones  than  anywhere.  Even  I  find  it, 
ringing  clear,  as  a  thing  beyond  disputing,  as  a 
thing  as  self-evident  as  sunrise  again  and  again  in 
the  expressed  thought  of  Mr.  Henry  James. 

But  you  know  this  progress  isn't  guaranteed. 
We  have  all  indeed  been  carried  away  completely 
by  the  up-rush  of  it  all.  To  me  now  this  Carmania 
seems  to  typify  the  whole  thing.  What  matter  it 
if  there  are  moments  when  one  reflects  on  the  mys 
terious  smallness  and  it  would  seem  the  ungrowing 
quality  of  the  human  content  of  it  all?  We  are, 
after  all,  astonishingly  like  flies  on  a  machine  that 
has  got  loose.  No  matter.  Those  people  on  the 
main-deck  are  the  oddest  crowd,  strange  Oriental- 

32 


MATERIAL   PROGRESS 

looking  figures  with  Astrakhan  caps,  hook -noses, 
shifty  eyes,  and  indisputably  dirty  habits,  bold- 
eyed,  red-capped,  expectorating  women,  quaint  and 
amazingly  dirty  children ;  Tartars  there  are  too,  and 
Cossacks,  queer  wraps,  queer  head-dresses,  a  sort 
of  greasy  picturesqueness  over  them  all.  They  use 
the  handkerchief  solely  as  a  head  covering.  Their 
deck  is  disgusting  with  fragments  of  food,  with  egg 
shells  they  haven't  had  the  decency  to  throw  over 
board.  Collectively  they  have  —  an  atmosphere. 
They're  going  where  we're  going,  wherever  that  is. 
What  matters  it?  What  matters  it,  too,  if  these 
people  about  me  in  the  artistic  apartment  talk  noth 
ing  but  trivialities  derived  from  the  Daily  Bulletin, 
think  nothing  but  trivialities,  are,  except  in  the 
capacity  of  paying  passengers,  the  most  ineffectual 
gathering  of  human  beings  conceivable?  What 
matters  it  that  there  is  no  connection,  no  under 
standing  whatever  between  them  and  that  large  and 
ominous  crowd  a  plank  or  so  and  a  yard  or  so  under 
our  feet?  Or  between  themselves  for  the  matter 
of  that?  What  matters  it  if  nobody  seems  to  be 
struck  by  the  fact  that  we  are  all,  the  three  thousand 
two  hundred  of  us  so  extraordinarily  got  together 
into  this  tremendous  machine,  and  that  not  only 
does  nobody  inquire  what  it  is  has  got  us  together 
in  this  astonishing  fashion  and  why,  but  that  no 
body  seems  to  feel  that  we  are  together  in  any  sort 
of  way  at  all  ?  One  looks  up  at  the  smoke-pouring 
funnels  and  back  at  the  foaming  wake.  It  will  be 

33 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

all  right.  Aren't  we  driving  ahead  westward  at  a 
pace  of  four  hundred  and  fifty  miles  a  day  ? 

And  twenty  or  thirty  thousand  other  souls, 
mixed  and  stratified,  on  great  steamers  ahead  of  us, 
or  behind,  are  driving  westward  too.  That  there's 
no  collective  mind  apparent  in  it  at  all,  worth  speak 
ing  about  is  so  much  the  better.  That  only  shows 
its  Destiny,  its  Progress  as  inevitable  as  gravitation. 
I  could  almost  believe  it,  as  I  sit  quietly  writing  here 
by  a  softly  shaded  light  in  this  elegantly  appointed 
drawing-room,  as  steady  as  though  I  was  in  my 
native  habitat  on  dry  land  instead  of  hurrying  al 
most  fearfully,  at  twenty  knots  an  hour,  over  a 
tumbling  empty  desert  of  blue  waves  under  a  windy 
sky.  But,  only  a  little  while  ago,  I  was  out  forward 
alone,  looking  at  that.  Everything  was  still  ex 
cept  for  the  remote  throbbing  of  the  engines  and 
the  nearly  effaced  sound  of  a  man,  singing  in  a 
strange  tongue,  that  came  from  the  third-class  gang 
way  far  below.  The  sky  was  clear,  save  for  a  few 
black  streamers  of  clouds,  Orion  hung  very  light  and 
large  above  the  waters,  and  a  great  new  moon,  still 
visibly  holding  its  dead  predecessor  in  its  crescent, 
sank  near  him.  Between  the  sparse  great  stars 
were  deep  blue  spaces,  unfathomed  distances. 

Out  there  I  had  been  reminded  of  space  and 
time.  Out  there  the  ship  was  just  a  hastening 
ephemeral  fire-fly  that  had  chanced  to  happen  across 
the  eternal  tumult  of  the  winds  and  sea. 


CHAPTER   III 

NEW  YORK 

(In  a  room  on  the  ninth  floor  in   the  sky -scraper  hotel 
New  York) 


MY  first  impressions  of  New  York  are 
impressions  enormously  to  enhance  the  effect  of 
this  Progress,  this  material  progress, 
that  is  to  say,  as  something  inevitable  and  inhuman, 
as  a  blindly  furious  energy  of  growth  that  must  go 
on.  Against  the  broad  and  level  gray  contours  of 
Liverpool  one  found  the  ocean  liner  portentously 
tall,  but  here  one  steams  into  the  middle  of  a  town 
that  dwarfs  the  ocean  liner.  The  sky-scrapers  that 
are  the  New-Yorker's  perpetual  boast  and  pride 
rise  up  to  greet  one  as  one  comes  through  the  Nar 
rows  into  the  Upper  Bay,  stand  out,  in  a  clustering 
group  of  tall  irregular  crcnellations,  the  strangest 
crown  that  ever  a  city  wore.  They  have  an  effect 
of  immense  incompleteness ;  each  one  seems  to  await 
some  needed  terminal, — to  be,  by  virtue  of  its  woolly 
jets  of  steam,  still  as  it  were  in  process  of  eruption. 
One  thinks  of  St.  Peter's  great  blue  dome,  finished 

35 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

and  done  as  one  saw  it  from  a  vine-shaded  wine- 
booth  above  the  Milvian  Bridge,  one  thinks  of  the 
sudden  ascendency  of  St.  Paul's  dark  grace,  as 
it  soars  out  over  any  one  who  comes  up  by  the 
Thames  towards  it.  These  are  efforts  that  have 
accomplished  their  ends,  and  even  Paris  illuminated 
under  the  tall  stem  of  the  Eiffel  Tower  looked  com 
pleted  and  defined.  But  New  York's  achievement 
is  a  threatening  promise,  growth  going  on  under  a 
pressure  that  increases,  and  amidst  a  hungry  uproar 
of  effort. 

One  gets  a  measure  of  the  quality  of  this  force  of 
mechanical,  of  inhuman,  growth  as  one  marks  the 
great  statue  of  Liberty  on  our  larboard,  which  is 
meant  to  dominate  and  fails  absolutely  to  dominate 
the  scene.  It  gets  to  three  hundred  feet  about,  by 
standing  on  a  pedestal  of  a  hundred  and  fifty ;  and 
the  uplifted  torch,  seen  against  the  sky,  suggests  an 
arm  straining  upward,  straining  in  hopeless  com 
petition  with  the  fierce  commercial  altitudes  ahead. 
Poor  liberating  Lady  of  the  American  ideal!  One 
passes  her  and  forgets. 

Happy  returning  natives  greet  the  great  pillars 
of  business  by  name,  the  St.  Paul  Building,  the 
World,  the  Manhattan  tower ;  the  English  new-comer 
notes  the  clear  emphasis  of  the  detail,  the  freedom 
from  smoke  and  atmospheric  mystery  that  New 
York  gains  from  burning  anthracite,  the  jetting 
white  steam  clouds  that  emphasize  that  freedom. 
Across  the  broad  harbor  plies  an  unfamiliar  traffic 

36 


NEW  YORK 

of  grotesque  broad  ferry-boats,  black  with  people, 
glutted  to  the  lips  with  vans  and  carts,  each  hooting 
and  yelping  its  own  distinctive  note,  and  there  is  a 
wild  hurrying  up  and  down  and  to  and  fro  of  piping 
and  bellowing  tugs  and  barges ;  and  a  great  floating 
platform,  bearing  a  railway  train,  gets  athwart  our 
course  as  we  ascend  and  evokes  megatherial  bel- 
lowings.  Everything  is  moving  at  a  great  speed, 
and  whistling  and  howling,  it  seems,  and  presently 
far  ahead  we  make  out  our  own  pier,  black  with  ex 
pectant  people,  and  set  up  our  own  distinctive  whoop, 
and  with  the  help  of  half  a  dozefi  furiously  noisy 
tugs  are  finally  lugged  and  butted  into  dock.  The 
tugs  converse  by  yells  and  whistles,  it  is  an  affair  of 
short-tempered  mechanical  monsters,  amidst  which 
one  watches  for  one's  opportunity  to  get  ashore. 

Noise  and  human  hurry  and  a  vastness  of  means 
and  collective  result,  rather  than  any  vastness  of 
achievement,  is  the  pervading  quality  of  New  York. 
The  great  thing  is  the  mechanical  thing,  the  unin 
tentional  thing  which  is  speeding  up  all  these  people, 
driving  them  in  headlong  hurry  this  way  and  that, 
exhorting  them  by  the  voice  of  every  car  conductor 
to  "step  lively,"  aggregating  them  into  shoving  and 
elbowing  masses,  making  them  stand  clinging  to 
straps,  jerking  them  up  elevator  shafts  and  pouring 
them  on  to  the  ferry-boats.  But  this  accidental  great 
thing  is  at  times  a  very  great  thing.  Much  more 
impressive  than  the  sky-scrapers  to  my  mind  is  the 
large  Brooklyn  suspension-bridge.  I  have  never 

37 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

troubled  to  ask  who  built  that ;  its  greatness  is  not 
in  its  design,  but  in  the  quality  of  necessity  one  per 
ceives  in  its  inanimate  immensity.  It  tells,  as  one 
goes  under  it  up  the  East  River,  but  it  is  far  more 
impressive  to  the  stranger  to  come  upon  it  by 
glimpses,  wandering  down  to  it  through  the  ill-paved 
van-infested  streets  from  Chatham  Square.  One  sees 
parts  of  Cyclopean  stone  arches,  one  gets  suggestive 
glimpses  through  the  jungle  growth  of  business  now 
of  the  back,  now  of  the  flanks,  of  the  monster;  then, 
as  one  comes  out  on  the  river,  one  discovers  far  up 
in  one's  sky  the  long  sweep  of  the  bridge  itself, 
foreshortened  and  with  a  maximum  of  perspective 
effect;  the  streams  of  pedestrians  and  the  long  line 
of  carts  and  vans,  quaintly  microscopic  against  the 
blue,  the  creeping  progress  of  the  little  cars  on  the 
lower  edge  of  the  long  chain  of  netting;  all  these 
things  dwindling  indistinguishably  before  Brooklyn 
is  reached.  Thence,  if  it  is  late  afternoon,  one  may 
walk  back  to  City  Hall  Park  and  encounter  and  ex 
perience  the  convergent  stream  of  clerks  and  work 
ers  making  for  the  bridge,  mark  it  grow  denser  and 
denser,  until  at  last  they  come  near  choking  even  the 
broad  approaches  of  the  giant  duct,  until  the  con 
gested  multitudes  jostle  and  fight  for  a  way.  They 
arrive  marching  afoot  by  every  street  in  endless  pro 
cession;  crammed  trolley-cars  disgorge  them;  the 
Subway  pours  them  out.  .  .  .  The  individuals  count 
for  nothing,  they  are  clerks  and  stenographers,  shop 
men,  shop-girls,  workers  of  innumerable  types,  black- 

38 


NEW   YORK 

coated  men,  hat-and-blouse  girls,  shabby  and  cheap 
ly  clad  persons,  such  as  one  sees  in  London,  in  Ber 
lin,  anywhere.  Perhaps  they  hurry  more,  perhaps 
they  seem  more  eager.  But  the  distinctive  effect 
is  the  mass,  the  black  torrent,  rippled  with  un 
meaning  faces,  the  great,  the  unprecedented  mul- 
titudinousness  of  the  thing,  the  inhuman  force  of 
it  all. 

I  made  no  efforts  to  present  any  of  my  letters,  or 
to  find  any  one  to  talk  to  on  my  first  day  in  New 
York.  I  landed,  got  a  casual  lunch,  and  wandered 
alone  until  New  York's  peculiar  effect  of  inhuman 
noise  and  pressure  and  growth  became  overwhelm 
ing,  touched  me  with  a  sense  of  solitude,  and  drove 
me  into  the  hospitable  companionship  of  the  Cent 
ury  Club.  Oh,  no  doubt  of  New  York's  immensity! 
The  sense  of  soulless  gigantic  forces,  that  took  no 
heed  of  men,  became  stronger  and  stronger  all  that 
day.  The  pavements  were  often  almost  incredibly 
out  of  repair,  when  I  became  footweary  the  street 
cars  would  not  wait  for  me,  and  I  had  to  learn  their 
stopping  -  points  as  best  I  might.  I  wandered, 
just  at  the  right  pitch  of  fatigue  to  get  the  full 
force  of  it  into  the  eastward  region  between  Third 
and  Fourth  Avenue,  came  upon  the  Elevated  rail 
way  at  its  worst,  the  darkened  streets  of  disordered 
paving  below,  trolley-car-congested,  the  ugly  clumsy 
lattice,  sonorously  busy  overhead,  a  clatter  of  vans 
and  draught-horses,  and  great  crowds  of  cheap,  base- 
looking  people  hurrying  uncivilly  by.  .  .  . 
4  39 


THE   FUTURE   IN  AMERICA 
II 

I  CORRECTED  that  first  crowded  im- 
Thwh°t™Mfrbie  pression  of  New  York  with  a  clearer, 
brighter  vision  of  expansiveness  when 
next  day  I  began  to  realize  the  social  quality  of 
New  York's  central  backbone,  between  Fourth 
Avenue  and  Sixth.  The  effect  remained  still  that 
of  an  immeasurably  powerful  forward  movement 
of  rapid  eager  advance,  a  process  of  enlargement 
and  increment  in  every  material  sense,  but  it  may 
be  because  I  was  no  longer  fatigued,  was  now  a  lit 
tle  initiated,  the  human  being  seemed  less  of  a  fly 
upon  the  wheels.  I  visited  immense  and  magnifi 
cent  clubs — London  has  no  such  splendors  as  the 
Union,  the  University,  the  new  hall  of  the  Har 
vard — I  witnessed  the  great  torrent  of  spending  and 
glittering  prosperity  in  carriage  and  motor-car  pour 
along  Fifth  Avenue.  I  became  aware  of  effects  that 
were  not  only  vast  and  opulent  but  fine.  It  grew 
upon  me  that  the  Twentieth  Century,  which  found 
New  York  brown-stone  of  the  color  of  desiccated 
chocolate,  meant  to  leave  it  a  city  of  white  and 
colored  marble.  I  found  myself  agape,  admiring  a 
sky-scraper — the  prow  of  the  Flat-iron  Building,  to 
be  particular,  ploughing  up  through  the  traffic  of 
Broadway  and  Fifth  Avenue  in  the  afternoon  light. 
The  New  York  sundown  and  twilight  seemed  to  me 
quite  glorious  things.  Down  the  western  streets 
one  gets  the  sky  hung  in  long  cloud-barred  strips, 

40 


NEW   YORK 

like  Japanese  paintings,  celestial  tranquil  yellows 
and  greens  and  pink  luminosity  toning  down  to  the 
reeking  blue-brown  edge  of  the  distant  New  Jersey 
atmosphere,  and  the  clear,  black,  hard  activity  of 
crowd  and  trolley-car  and  Elevated  railroad. 
Against  this  deepening  color  came  the  innumerable 
little  lights  of  the  house  cliffs  and  the  street  tier 
above  tier.  New  York  is  lavish  of  light,  it  is  lavish 
of  everything,  it  is  full  of  the  sense  of  spending  from 
an  inexhaustible  supply.  For  a  time  one  is  drawn 
irresistibly  into  the  universal  belief  in  that  inex 
haustible  supply. 

At  a  bright  table  in  Delmonico's  to-day  at  lunch- 
time,  my  host  told  me  the  first  news  of  the  de 
struction  of  the  great  part  of  San  Francisco  by  earth 
quake  and  fire.  It  had  just  come  through  to  him, 
it  wasn't  yet  being  shouted  by  the  newsboys.  He 
told  me  compactly  of  dislocated  water-mains,  of  the 
ill-luck  of  the  unusual  eastward  wind  that  was  blow 
ing  the  fire  up- town,  of  a  thousand  reported  dead, 
of  the  manifest  doom  of  the  greater  portion  of  the 
city,  and  presently  the  shouting  voices  in  the  street 
outside  arose  to  chorus  him.  He  was  a  newspaper 
man  and  a  little  preoccupied  because  his  San  Fran 
cisco  offices  were  burning,  and  that  no  further  news 
was  arriving  after  these  first  intimations.  Natural 
ly  the  catastrophe  was  our  topic.  But  this  disaster 
did  not  affect  him,  it  does  not  seem  to  have  affected 
any  one  with  a  sense  of  final  destruction,  with  any 
foreboding  of  irreparable  disaster.  Every  one  is 

41 


THE   FUTURE   IN  AMERICA 

talking  of  it  this  afternoon,  and  no  one  is  in  the  least 
degree  dismayed.  I  have  talked  and  listened  in 
two  clubs,  watched  people  in  cars  and  in  the  street, 
and  one  man  is  glad  that  Chinatown  will  be  cleared 
out  for  good ;  another's  chief  solicitude  is  for  Millet's 
"Man  with  the  Hoe."  " They'll  cut  it  out  of  the 
frame,"  he  says,  a  little  anxiously.  "Sure."  But 
there  is  no  doubt  anywhere  that  San  Francisco  can 
be  rebuilt,  larger,  better,  and  soon.  Just  as  there 
would  be  none  at  all  if  all  this  New  York  that  has 
so  obsessed  me  with  its  limitless  bigness  was  itself 
a  blazing  ruin.  I  believe  these  people  would  more 
than  half  like  the  situation.  It  would  give  them 
scope,  it  would  facilitate  that  conversion  into  white 
marble  in  progress  everywhere,  it  would  settle  the 
difficulties  of  the  Elevated  railroad  and  clear  out  the 
tangles  of  lower  New  York.  There  is  no  sense  of 
accomplishment  and  finality  in  any  of  these  things, 
the  largest,  the  finest,  the  tallest,  are  so  obviously 
no  more  than  symptoms  and  promises  of  Material 
Progress,  of  inhuman  material  progress  that  is  so 
in  the  nature  of  things  that  no  one  would  regret 
their  passing.  That,  I  say  again,  is  at  the  first 
encounter  the  peculiar  American  effect  that  began 
directly  I  stepped  aboard  the  liner,  and  that  rises 
here  to  a  towering,  shining,  clamorous  climax.  The 
sense  of  inexhaustible  supply,  of  an  ultra -human 
force  behind  it  all,  is,  for  a  time,  invincible. 

One  assumes,  with  Mr.  Saltus,  that  all  America  is 
in  this  vein,  and  that  this  is  the  way  the  future  must 

42 


NEW   YORK 

inevitably  go.  One  has  a  vision  of  bright  electrical 
subways,  replacing  the  filth-diffusing  railways  of 
to-day,  of  clean,  clear  pavements  free  altogether  from 
the  fly-prolific  filth  of  horses  coming  almost,  as  it 
were,  of  their  own  accord  beneath  the  feet  of  a  popu 
lation  that  no  longer  expectorates  at  all;  of  grimy 
stone  and  peeling  paint  giving  way  everywhere  to 
white  marble  and  spotless  surfaces,  and  a  shining 
order,  of  everything  wider,  taller,  cleaner,  better.  .  .  . 
So  that,  in  the  meanwhile,  a  certain  amount  of 
jostling  and -hurry  and  untidiness,  and  even — to  put 
it  mildly — forcefulness  may  be  forgiven. 


in 

I  VISITED  Ellis  Island  yesterday.  It 
us  island  chanced  to  be  a  good  day  for  my  pur 
pose.  For  the  first  time  in  its  history 
this  filter  of  immigrant  humanity  has  this  week 
proved  inadequate  to  the  demand  upon  it.  It  was 
choked,  and  half  a  score  of  gravid  liners  were  lying 
uncomfortably  up  the  harbor,  replete  with  twenty 
thousand  or  so  of  crude  Americans  from  Ireland  and 
Poland  and  Italy  and  Syria  and  Finland  and  Al 
bania  ;  men,  women,  children,  dirt,  and  bags  together. 
Of  immigration  I  shall  have  to  write  later ;  what 
concerns  me  now  is  chiefly  the  wholesale  and  multi 
tudinous  quality  of  that  place  and  its  work.  I 
made  my  way  with  my  introduction  along  white 

43 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

passages  and  through  traps  and  a  maze  of  metal 
lattices  that  did  for  a  while  succeed  in  catching  and 
imprisoning  me,  to  Commissioner  Wachorn,  in  his 
quiet,  green-toned  office.  There,  for  a  time,  I  sat 
judicially  and  heard  him  deal  methodically,  swiftly, 
sympathetically,  with  case  after  case,  a  string  of 
appeals  against  the  sentences  of  deportation  pro 
nounced  in  the  busy  little  courts  below.  First  would 
come  one  dingy  and  strangely  garbed  group  of  wild- 
eyed  aliens,  and  then  another:  Roumanian  gypsies, 
South  Italians,  Ruthenians,  Swedes,  each  under  the 
intelligent  guidance  of  a  uniformed  interpreter,  and 
a  case  would  be  started,  a  report  made  to  Washing 
ton,  and  they  would  drop  out  again,  hopeful  or 
sullen  or  fearful  as  the  evidence  might  trend.  .  .  . 

Down-stairs  we  find  the  courts,  and  these  seen,  we 
traverse  long  refectories,  long  aisles  of  tables,  and 
close  -  packed  dormitories  with  banks  of  steel  mat 
tresses,  tier  above  tier,  and  galleries  and  passages 
innumerable,  perplexing  intricacy  that  slowly  grows 
systematic  with  the  Commissioner's  explanations. 

Here  is  a  huge,  gray,  untidy  waiting-room,  like  a 
big  railway-depot  room,  full  of  a  sinister  crowd  of 
miserable  people,  loafing  about  or  sitting  dejectedly, 
whom  America  refuses,  and  here  a  second  and  a 
third  such  chamber  each  with  its  tragic  and  evil- 
looking  crowd  that  hates  us,  and  that  even  ventures 
to  groan  and  hiss  at  us  a  little  for  our  glimpse  of  its 
large  dirty  spectacle  of  hopeless  failure,  and  here, 
squalid  enough  indeed,  but  still  to  some  degree 

44 


NEW   YORK 

hopeful,  are  the  appeal  cases  as  yet  undecided.  In 
one  place,  at  a  bank  of  ranges,  works  an  army  of 
men  cooks,  in  another  spins  the  big  machinery  of 
the  Ellis  Island  laundry,  washing  blankets,  drying 
blankets,  day  in  and  day  out,  a  big  clean  steamy 
space  of  hurry  and  rotation.  Then,  I  recall  a  neat 
apartment  lined  to  the  ceiling  with  little  drawers, 
a  card-index  of  the  names  and  nationalities  and  sig 
nificant  circumstances  of  upward  of  a  million  and  a 
half  of  people  who  have  gone  on  and  who  are  yet 
liable  to  recall. 

The  central  hall  is  the  key  of  this  impression. 
All  day  long,  through  an  intricate  series  of  metal 
pens,  the  long  procession  files,  step  by  step,  bear 
ing  bundles  and  trunks  and  boxes,  past  this  examiner 
and  that,  past  the  quick,  alert  medical  officers,  the 
tallymen  and  the  clerks.  At  every  point  immigrants 
are  being  picked  out  and  set  aside  for  further  medical 
examination,  for  further  questions,  for  the  busy  lit 
tle  courts;  but  the  main  procession  satisfies  condi 
tions,  passes  on.  It  is  a  daily  procession  that,  with 
a  yard  of  space  to  each,  would  stretch  over  three 
miles,  that  any  week  in  the  year  would  more  than 
equal  in  numbers  that  daily  procession  of  the  un 
employed  that  is  becoming  a  regular  feature  of  the 
London  winter,  that  in  a  year  could  put  a  cordon 
round  London  or  New  York  of  close-marching  peo 
ple,  could  populate  a  new  Boston,  that  in  a  century — 
What  in  a  century  will  it  all  amount  to  ?  ... 

On  they  go,  from  this  pen  to  that,  pen  by  pen, 

45 


THE    FUTURE    IN   AMERICA 

towards  a  desk  at  a  little  metal  wicket — the  gate 
of  America.  Through  this  metal  wicket  drips  the 
immigration  stream — all  day  long,  every  two  or 
three  seconds  an  immigrant,  with  a  valise  or  a 
bundle,  passes  the  little  desk  and  goes  on  past  the 
well-managed  money-changing  place,  past  the  care 
fully  organized  separating  ways  that  go  to  this  rail 
way  or  that,  past  the  guiding,  protecting  officials — 
into  a  new  world.  The  great  majority  are  young 
men  and  young  women,  between  seventeen  and 
thirty,  good,  youthful,  hopeful,  peasant  stock.  They 
stand  in  a  long  string,  waiting  to  go  through  that 
wicket,  with  bundles,  with  little  tin  boxes,  with 
cheap  portmanteaus,  with  odd  packages,  in  pairs, 
in  families,  alone,  women  with  children,  men  with 
strings  of  dependents,  young  couples.  All  day  that 
string  of  human  beads  waits  there,  jerks  forward, 
waits  again;  all  day  and  every  day,  constantly  re 
plenished,  constantly  dropping  the  end  beads 
through  the  wicket,  till  the  units  mount  to  hundreds 
and  the  hundreds  to  thousands.  .  .  . 

Yes,  Ellis  Island  is  quietly  immense.  It  gives  one 
a  visible  image  of  one  aspect  at  least  of  this  world- 
large  process  of  filling  and  growing  and  synthesis, 
which  is  America. 

"Look  there!"  said  the  Commissioner,  taking  me 
by  the  arm  and  pointing,  and  I  saw  a  monster 
steamship  far  away,  and  already  a  big  bulk  looming 
up  the  Narrows.  "It's  the  Kaiser  Wilhelm  der 
Grosse.  She's  got — I  forget  the  exact  figures,  but 

46 


NEW  YORK 

let  us  say — eight  hundred  and  fifty-three  more  for 
us.  She'll  have  to  keep  them  until  Friday  at  the 
earliest.  And  there's  more  behind  her,  and  more 
strung  out  all  across  the  Atlantic." 

In  one  record  day  this  month  21,000  immigrants 
came  into  the  port  of  New  York  alone ;  in  one  week 
over  50,000.  This  year  the  total  will  be  1,200,000 
souls,  pouring  in,  finding  work  at  once,  producing  no 
fall  in  wages.  They  start  digging  and  building  and 
making.  Just  think  of  the  dimensions  of  it! 


IV 

ONE  must  get  away  from  New  York 
TO  Fan  River  to  see  the  place  in  its  proper  relations. 
I  visited  Staten  Island  and  Jersey  City, 
motored  up  to  Sleepy  Hollow  (where  once  the  Head 
less  Horseman  rode),  saw  suburbs  and  intimations 
of  suburbs  without  end,  and  finished  with  the  long 
and  crowded  spectacle  of  the  East  River  as  one  sees 
it  from  the  Fall  River  boat.  It  was  Friday  night, 
and  the  Fall  River  boat  was  in  a  state  of  fine  con 
gestion  with  Jews,  Italians,  and  week-enders,  and 
one  stood  crowded  and  surveyed  the  crowded  shore, 
the  sky  -  scrapers  and  tenement  -  houses,  the  huge 
grain  elevators,  big  warehouses,  the  great  Brooklyn 
Bridge,  the  still  greater  Williamsburgh  Bridge,  the 
great  promise  of  yet  another  monstrous  bridge, 
overwhelmingly  monstrous  by  any  European  ex- 

47 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

ample  I  know,  and  so  past  long  miles  of  city  to 
the  left  and  to  the  right  past  the  wide  Brooklyn 
navy-yard  (where  three  clean  white  war-ships  lay 
moored),  past  the  clustering  castellated  asylums, 
hospitals,  almshouses  and  reformatories  of  Black- 
well's  long  shore  and  Ward's  Island,  and  then 
through  a  long  reluctant  diminuendo  on  each  re 
ceding  bank,  until,  indeed,  New  York,  though  it 
seemed  incredible,  had  done. 

And  at  one  point  a  grave- voiced  man  in  a  peaked 
cap,  with  guide-books  to  sell,  pleased  me  greatly  by 
ending  all  idle  talk  suddenly  with  the  stentorian 
announcement:  "We  are  now  in  Hell  Gate.  We 
are  now  passing  through  Hell  Gate!" 

But  they've  blown  Hell  Gate  open  with  dynamite, 
and  it  wasn't  at  all  the  Hell  Gate  that  I  read  about 
in  my  boyhood  in  the  delightful  chronicle  of  Knick 
erbocker. 

So  through  an  elbowing  evening  (to  the  tune  of 
"Cavalleria  Rusticana "  on  an  irrepressible  string 
band)  and  a  night  of  unmitigated  fog-horn  to  Bos 
ton,  which  I  had  been  given  to  understand  was  a 
cultured  and  uneventful  city  offering  great  oppor 
tunities  for  reflection  and  intellectual  digestion. 
And,  indeed,  the  large  quiet  of  Beacon  Street,  in  the 
early  morning  sunshine,  seemed  to  more  than  jus 
tify  that  expectation.  .  .  . 


CHAPTER   IV 
GROWTH    INVINCIBLE 


BUT  Boston  did  not  propose  that  its 
less-assertive  key  should  be  misunder 
stood,  and  in  a  singularly  short  space 
of  time  I  found  myself  climbing  into  a  tremulous 
impatient  motor-car  in  company  with  three  enthu 
siastic  exponents  of  the  work  of  the  Metropolitan 
Park  Commission,  and  provided  with  a  neatly 
tinted  map,  large  and  framed  and  glazed,  to  ex 
plore  a  fresh  and  more  deliberate  phase  in  this  great 
American  symphony,  this  symphony  of  Growth. 

If  possible  it  is  more  impressive,  even,  than  the 
crowded  largeness  of  New  York,  to  trace  the  serene 
preparation  Boston  has  made  through  this  Com 
mission  to  be  widely  and  easily  vast.  New  York's 
humanity  has  a  curious  air  of  being  carried  along 
upon  a  wave  of  irresistible  prosperity,  but  Boston 
confesses  design.  I  suppose  no  city  in  all  the 
world  (unless  it  be  Washington)  has  ever  produced 
so  complete  and  ample  a  forecast  of  its  own  future 
as  this  Commission's  plan  of  Boston.  An  area  with 

40 


THE    FUTURE    IN   AMERICA 

a  radius  of  between  fifteen  and  twenty  miles  from 
the  State  House  has  been  planned  out  and  prepared 
for  Growth.  Great  reservations  of  woodland  and 
hill  have  been  made,  the  banks  of  nearly  all  the 
streams  and  rivers  and  meres  have  been  secured  for 
public  park  and  garden,  for  boating  and  other 
water  sports  big  avenues  of  vigorous  young  trees; 
a  hundred  and  fifty  yards  or  so  wide,  with  drive 
ways  and  ridingways  and  a  central  grassy  band  for 
electric  tramways,  have  been  prepared,  and,  indeed, 
the  fair  and  ample  and  shady  new  Boston,  the 
Boston  of  1950,  grows  visibly  before  one's  eyes.  I 
found  myself  comparing  the  disciplined  confidence 
of  these  proposals  to  the  blind  enlargement  of  Lon 
don;  London,  that  like  a  bowl  of  viscid  human  fluid, 
boils  sullenly  over  the  rim  of  its  encircling  hills  and 
slops  messily  and  uglily  into  the  home  counties.  I 
could  not  but  contrast  their  large  intelligence  with 
the  confused  hesitations  and  waste  and  muddle  of 
our  English  suburban  developments.  .  .  . 

There  were  moments,  indeed,  when  it  seemed  too 
good  to  be  true,  and  Mr.  Sylvester  Baxter,  who  was 
with  me  and  whose  faith  has  done  so  much  to  se 
cure  this  mapping  out  of  a  city's  growth  beyond  all 
precedent,  became  the  victim  of  my  doubts.  "Will 
this  enormous  space  of  sunlit  woodland  and  marsh 
and  meadow  really  be  filled  at  any  time?"  I  urged. 
"All  cities  do  not  grow.  Cities  have  shrunken." 

I  recalled  Bruges.  I  recalled  the  empty,  goat- 
sustaining,  flower  -  rich  meadows  of  Rome  within 

50 


GROWTH   INVINCIBLE 

the  wall.  What  made  him  so  sure  of  this  pro 
gressive  magnificence  of  Boston's  growth?  My 
doubts  fell  on  stony  soil.  My  companions  seemed 
to  think  these  scepticisms  inopportune,  a  forced 
eccentricity,  like  doubting  the  coming  of  to-morrow. 
Of  course  Growth  will  go  on.  .  .  . 

The  subject  was  changed  by  the  sight  of  the  fine 
marble  buildings  of  the  Harvard  medical  school,  a 
shining  facade  partially  eclipsed  by  several  dingy 
and  unsightly  wooden  houses. 

"These  shanties  will  go,  of  course,"  says  one  of 
my  companions.  "It's  proposed  to  take  the 
avenue  right  across  this  space  straight  to  the 
schools." 

"You'll  have  to  fill  the  marsh,  then,  and  buy  the 
houses." 

"Sure.".  .  . 

I  find  myself  comparing  this  huge  growth  process 
of  America  with  the  things  in  my  own  land.  After 
all,  this  growth  is  no  distinctive  American  thing;  it 
is  the  same  process  anywhere — only  in  America 
there  are  no  disguises,  no  complications.  Come  to 
think  of  it,  Birmingham  and  Manchester  are  as  new 
as  Boston — newer;  and  London,  south  and  east  of 
the  Thames,  is,  save  for  a  little  nucleus,  more  re 
cent  than  Chicago — is  in  places,  I  am  told,  with  its 
smoky  disorder,  its  clattering  ways,  its  brutality  of 
industrial  conflict,  very  like  Chicago.  But  nowhere 
now  is  growth  still  so  certainly  and  confidently 
going  on  as  here.  Nowhere  is  it  upon  so  great  a 

S1 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

scale  as  here,  and  with  so  confident  an  outlook  tow 
ards  the  things  to  come.  And  nowhere  is  it  pass 
ing  more  certainly  from  the  first  phase  of  a  mob- 
like  rush  of  individualistic  undertakings  into  a 
planned  and  ordered  progress. 


ii 

EVERYWHERE  in  the  America  I  have 
The  Ba*/*^  seen  the  same  note  sounds,  the  note 
of  a  fatal  gigantic  economic  develop 
ment,  of  large  prevision  and  enormous  pressures. 

I  heard  it  clear  above  the  roar  of  Niagara — for, 
after  all,  I  stopped  off  at  Niagara. 

As  a  water-fall,  Niagara's  claim  to  distinction  is 
now  mainly  quantitative;  its  spectacular  effect,  its 
magnificent  and  humbling  size  and  splendor,  were 
long  since  destroyed  beyond  recovery  by  the  hotels, 
the  factories,  the  power-houses,  the  bridges  and 
tramways  and  hoardings  that  arose  about  it.  It 
must  have  been  a  fine  thing  to  happen  upon  sud 
denly  after  a  day  of  solitary  travel;  the  Indians, 
they  say,  gave  it  worship;  but  it's  no  great  wonder 
to  reach  it  by  trolley-car,  through  a  street  hack- 
infested  and  full  of  adventurous  refreshment-places 
and  souvenir-shops  and  the  touting  guides.  There 
were  great  quantities  of  young  couples  and  other 
sight-seers  with  the  usual  encumbrances  of  wrap 
and  bag  and  umbrella,  trailing  out  across  the 

52 


GROWTH   INVINCIBLE 

bridges  and  along  the  neat  paths  of  the  Reservation 
Parks,  asking  the  way  to  this  point  and  that.  No 
tice  boards  cut  the  eye,  offering  extra  joys  and 
memorable  objects  for  twenty-five  and  fifty  cents, 
and  it  was  proposed  you  should  keep  off  the  grass. 

After  all,  the  gorge  of  Niagara  is  very  like  any 
good  gorge  in  the  Ardennes,  except  that  it  has 
more  water;  it's  about  as  wide  and  about  as  deep, 
and  there  is  no  effect  at  all  that  one  has  not  seen 
a  dozen  times  in  other  cascades.  One  gets  all  the 
water  one  wants  at  Tivoli,  one  has  gone  behind  half 
a  hundred  downpours  just  as  impressive  in  Switzer 
land;  a  hundred  tons  of  water  is  really  just  as 
stunning  as  ten  million.  A  hundred  tons  of  water 
stuns  one  altogether,  and  what  more  do  you  want? 
One  recalls  "Orridos"  and  "Schluchts"  that  are 
not  only  magnificent  but  lonely. 

No  doubt  the  Falls,  seen  from  the  Canadian  side, 
have  a  peculiar  long  majesty  of  effect;  but  the  finest 
thing  in  it  all,  to  my  mind,  was  not  Niagara  at  all, 
but  to  look  up-stream  from  Goat  Island  and  see 
the  sea-wide  crest  of  the  flashing  sunlit  rapids 
against  the  gray-blue  sky.  That  was  like  a  limit 
less  ocean  pouring  down  a  sloping  world  towards 
one,  and  I  lingered,  held  by  that,  returning  to  it 
through  an  indolent  afternoon.  It  gripped  the 
imagination  as  nothing  else  there  seemed  to  do.  It 
was  so  broad  an  infinitude  of  splash  and  hurry. 
And,  moreover,  all  the  enterprising  hotels  and  ex 
pectant  trippers  were  out  of  sight. 

53 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

That  was  the  best  of  the  display.  The  real  in 
terest  of  Niagara  for  me,  was  not  in  the  water-fall 
but  in  the  human  accumulations  about  it.  They 
stood  for  the  future,  threats  and  promises,  and  the 
water- fall  was  just  a  vast  reiteration  of  falling  water. 
The  note  of  growth  in  human  accomplishment  rose 
clear  and  triumphant  above  the  elemental  thunder. 

For  the  most  part  these  accumulations  of  human 
effort  about  Niagara  are  extremely  defiling  and 
ugly.  Nothing — not  even  the  hotel  signs  and  ad 
vertisement  boards — could  be  more  offensive  to 
the  eye  and  mind  than  the  Schoellkopf  Company's 
untidy  confusion  of  sheds  and  buildings  on  the 
American  side,  wastefully  squirting  out  long,  tail- 
race  cascades  below  the  bridge,  and  nothing  more 
disgusting  than  the  sewer-pipes  and  gas-work  ooze 
that  the  town  of  Niagara  Falls  contributes  to  the 
scenery.  But,  after  all,  these  represent  only  the 
first  slovenly  onslaught  of  mankind's  expansion,  the 
pioneers'  camp  of  the  human-growth  process  that 
already  changes  its  quality  and  manner.  There 
are  finer  things  than  these  outrages  to  be  found. 

The  dynamos  and  turbines  of  the  Niagara  Falls 
Power  Company,  for  example,  impressed  me  far 
more  profoundly  than  the  Cave  of  the  Winds;  are, 
indeed,  to  my  mind,  greater  and  more  beautiful  than 
that  accidental  eddying  of  air  beside  a  downpour. 
They  are  will  made  visible,  thought  translated  into 
easy  and  commanding  things.  They  are  clean, 
noiseless,  and  starkly  powerful.  All  the  clatter  and 

54 


GROWTH   INVINCIBLE 

tumult  of  the  early  age  of  machinery  is  past  and 
gone  here;  there  is  no  smoke,  no  coal  grit,  no  dirt 
at  all.  The  wheel-pit  into  which  one  descends  has 
an  almost  cloistered  quiet  about  its  softly  humming 
turbines.  These  are  altogether  noble  masses  of 
machinery,  huge  black  slumbering  monsters,  great 
sleeping  tops  that  engender  irresistible  forces  in 
their  sleep.  They  sprang,  armed  like  Minerva, 
from  serene  and  speculative,  foreseeing  and  en 
deavoring  brains.  First  was  the  word  and  then 
these  po\vers.  A  man  goes  to  and  fro  quietly  in 
the  long,  clean  hall  of  the  dynamos.  There  is  no 
clangor,  no  racket.  Yet  the  outer  rim  of  the  big 
generators  is  spinning  at  the  pace  of  a  hundred 
thousand  miles  an  hour;  the  dazzling  clean  switch 
board,  with  its  little  handles  and  levers,  is  the  seat 
of  empire  over  more  power  than  the  strength  of  a 
million  disciplined,  unquestioning  men.  All  these 
great  things  are  as  silent,  as  wonderfully  made,  as 
the  heart  in  a  living  body,  and  stouter  and  stronger 
than  that.  .  .  . 

When  I  thought  that  these  two  huge  wheel-pits 
of  this  company  are  themselves  but  a  little  intima 
tion  of  what  can  be  done  in  this  way,  what  will  be 
done  in  this  way,  my  imagination  towered  above 
me.  I  fell  into  a  day-dream  of  the  coming  power 
of  men,  and  how  that  power  may  be  used  by 
them.  .  .  . 

For  surely  the  greatness  of  life  is  still  to  come,  it 
is  not  in  such  accidents  as  mountains  or  the  sea.  I 
5  55 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

have  seen  the  splendor  of  the  mountains,  sunrise 
and  sunset  among  them,  and  the  waste  immensity 
of  sky  and  sea.  I  am  not  blind  because  I  can  see 
beyond  these  glories.  To  me  no  other  thing  is 
credible  than  that  all  the  natural  beauty  in  the 
world  is  only  so  much  material  for  the  imagination 
and  the  mind,  so  many  hints  and  suggestions  for 
art  and  creation.  Whatever  is,  is  but  the  lure  and 
symbol  towards  what  can  be  willed  and  done.  Man 
lives  to  make — in  the  end  he  must  make,  for  there 
will  be  nothing  else  left  for  him  to  do. 

And  the  world  he  will  make — after  a  thousand 
years  or  so! 

I,  at  least,  can  forgive  the  loss  of  all  the  acci 
dental,  unmeaning  beauty  that  is  going  for  the  sake 
of  the  beauty  of  fine  order  and  intention  that  will 
come.  I  believe — passionately,  as  a  doubting  lover 
believes  in  his  mistress  —  in  the  future  of  man 
kind.  And  so  to  me  it  seems  altogether  well  that 
all  the  froth  and  hurry  of  Niagara  at  last,  all  of 
it,  dying  into  hungry  canals  of  intake,  should 
rise  again  in  light  and  power,  in  ordered  and  equip 
ped  and  proud  and  beautiful  humanity,  in  cities 
and  palaces  and  the  emancipated  souls  and  hearts 
of  men.  .  .  . 

I  turned  back  to  look  at  the  power-house  as  I 
walked  towards  the  Falls,  and  halted  and  stared. 
Its  architecture  brought  me  out  of  my  day-dream 
to  the  quality  of  contemporary  things  again.  It's 
a  well-intentioned  building  enough,  extraordinarily 

56 


GROWTH   INVINCIBLE 

well  intentioned,  and  regardless  of  expense.  It's 
in  granite  and  by  Stanford  White,  and  yet —  It 
hasn't  caught  the  note.  There's  a  touch  of  respect 
ability  in  it,  more  than  a  hint  of  the  box  of  bricks. 
Odd,  but  I'd  almost  as  soon  have  had  one  of  the 
Schoellkopf  sheds. 

A  community  that  can  produce  such  things  as 
those  turbines  and  dynamos,  and  then  cover  them 
over  with  this  dull  exterior,  is  capable,  one  real 
izes,  of  feats  of  bathos.  One  feels  that  all  the 
power  that  throbs  in  the  copper  cables  below  may 
end  at  last  in  turning  Great  Wheels  for  excur 
sionists,  stamping  out  aluminum  "fancy"  ware, 
and  illuminating  night  advertisements  for  drug 
shops  and  music  halls.  I  had  an  afternoon  of  busy 
doubts.  .  .  . 

There  is  much  discussion  about  Niagara  at 
present.  It  may  be  some  queer  compromise,  based 
on  the  pretence  that  a  voluminous  water  -  fall 
is  necessarily  a  thing  of  incredible  beauty,  and 
a  human  use  is  necessarily  a  degrading  use,  will 
"save"  Niagara  and  the  hack -drivers  and  the 
souvenir-shops  for  series  of  years  yet,  "a  magnifi 
cent  monument  to  the  pride  of  the  United  States 
in  a  glory  of  nature,"  as  one  journalistic  savior 
puts  it.  It  is,  as  public  opinion  stands,  a  quite 
conceivable  thing.  This  electric  development  may 
be  stopped  after  all,  and  the  huge  fall  of  water 
remain  surrounded  by  gravel  paths  and  parapets 
and  geranium-beds,  a  staring-point  for  dull  won- 

57 


THE   FUTURE   IN  AMERICA 

der,  a  crown  for  a  day's  excursion,  a  thunderous 
impressive  accessory  to  the  vulgar  love  -  making 
that  fills  the  surrounding  hotels,  a  Titanic  im 
becility  of  wasted  gifts.  But  I  don't  think  so. 
I  think  somebody  will  pay  something,  and  the 
journalistic  zeal  for  scenery  abate.  I  think  the 
huge  social  and  industrial  process  of  America  will 
win  in  this  conflict,  and  at  last  capture  Niagara 
altogether. 

And  then — what  use  will  it  make  of  its  prey  ? 


in 

IN  smoky,  vast,  undisciplined  Chicago 
Tcehkago°f  Growth  forced  itself  upon  me  again  as 
the  dominant  American  fact,  but  this 
time  a  dark  disorder  of  growth.  I  went  about 
Chicago  seeing  many  things  of  which  I  may  say 
something  later.  I  visited  the  top  of  the  Masonic 
Building  and  viewed  a  wilderness  of  sky-scrapers. 
I  acquired  a  felt  of  memories  of  swing  bridges  and 
viaducts  and  interlacing  railways  and  jostling 
crowds  and  extraordinarily  dirty  streets,  I  learnt 
something  of  the  mystery  of  the  "floating  founda 
tions"  upon  which  so  much  of  Chicago  rests.  But 
I  got  my  best  vision  of  Chicago  as  I  left  it. 

I  sat  in  the  open  observation- car  at  the  end  of 
the  Pennsylvania  Limited  Express,  and  watched 
the  long  defile  of  industrialism  from  the  Union 
Station  in  the  heart  of  things  to  out  beyond  South 

58 


GROWTH   INVINCIBLE 

Chicago,  a  dozen  miles  away.  I  had  not  gone  to  the 
bloody  spectacle  of  the  stock-yards  that  "feed  the 
world,"  because,  to  be  frank,  I  have  an  immense  re 
pugnance  to  the  killing  of  fixed  and  helpless  ani 
mals  ;  I  saw  nothing  of  those  ill-managed,  ill-inspected 
establishments,  though  I  smelt  the  unwholesome 
reek  from  them  ever  and  again,  and  so  it  was  here 
I  saw  for  the  first  time  the  enormous  expanse  and 
intricacy  of  railroads  that  net  this  great  industrial 
desolation,  and  something  of  the  going  and  coming 
of  the  -myriads  of  polyglot  workers.  Chicago  burns 
bituminous  coal,  it  has  a  reek  that  outdoes  London, 
and  right  and  left  of  the  line  rise  vast  chimneys, 
huge  blackened  grain-elevators,  flame-crowned  fur 
naces  and  gauntly  ugly  and  filthy  factory  build 
ings,  monstrous  mounds  of  refuse,  desolate,  empty 
lots  littered  with  rusty  cans,  old  iron,  and  indescrib 
able  rubbish.  Interspersed  with  these  are  groups 
of  dirty,  disreputable,  insanitary  -  looking  wooden 
houses. 

We  swept  along  the  many-railed  track,  and  the 
straws  and  scraps  of  paper  danced  in  our  eddy  as 
we  passed.  We  overtook  local  trains  and  they  re 
ceded  slowly  in  the  great  perspective,  huge  freight- 
trains  met  us  or  were  overtaken;  long  trains  of 
doomed  cattle  passed  northward;  solitary  engines 
went  by — every  engine  tolling  a  melancholy  bell; 
open  trucks  crowded  with  workmen  went  cityward. 
By  the  side  of  the  track,  and  over  the  level  crossings, 
walked  great  numbers  of  people.  So  it  goes  on 

59 


THE   FUTURE   IN  AMERICA 

mile  after  mile — Chicago.  The  sun  was  now  bright, 
now  pallid  through  some  streaming  curtain  of  smoke ; 
the  spring  afternoon  was  lit  here  and  again  by  the 
gallant  struggle  of  some  stunted  tree  with  a  rare 
and  startling  note  of  new  green.  .  .  . 

It  was  like  a  prolonged,  enlarged  mingling  of  the 
south  side  of  London  with  all  that  is  bleak  and  ugly 
in  the  Black  Country.  It  is  the  most  perfect  pres 
entation  of  nineteenth  -  century  individualistic  in 
dustrialism  I  have  ever  seen — in  its  vast,  its  magnifi 
cent  squalor;  it  is  pure  nineteenth  century;  it  had 
no  past  at  all  before  that;  in  1800  it  was  empty 
prairie,  and  one  marvels  for  its  future.  It  is  indeed 
a  nineteenth-century  nightmare  that  culminates  be 
yond  South  Chicago  in  the  monstrous  fungoid  shapes, 
the  endless  smoking  chimneys,  the  squat  retorts, 
the  black  smoke  pall  of  the  Standard  Oil  Com 
pany.  For  a  time  the  sun  is  veiled  altogether  by 
that.  .  .  . 

And  then  suddenly  Chicago  is  a  dark  smear  under 
the  sky,  and  we  are  in  the  large  emptiness  of  Ameri 
ca,  the  other  America — America  in  between. 


IV 

" UNDISCIPLINED" — that  is  the  word 
£or  Chicago.     It  is  the  word  for  all  the 
progress  of  the  Victorian  time,  a  scram 
bling,   ill-mannered,    undignified,    unintelligent   de- 

60 


GROWTH   INVINCIBLE 

velopment  of  material  resources.  Packing- town, 
for  example,  is  a  place  that  feeds  the  world  with 
meat,  that  concentrates  the  produce  of  a  splendid 
countryside  at  a  position  of  imperial  advantage, 
and  its  owners  have  no  more  sense,  no  better  moral 
quality,  than  to  make  it  stink  in  the  nostrils  of  any 
one  who  comes  within  two  miles  of  it;  to  make  it 
a  centre  of  distribution  for  disease  and  decay,  an 
arena  of  shabby  evasions  and  extra  profits;  a  scene 
of  brutal  economic  conflict  and  squalid  filthiness, 
offensive  to  every  sense.  (I  wish  I  could  catch  the 
soul  of  Herbert  Spencer  and  tether  it  in  Chicago  for 
awhile  to  gather  fresh  evidence  upon  the  superiority 
of  unfettered  individualistic  enterprises  to  things 
managed  by  the  state.) 

Want  of  discipline !  Chicago  is  one  hoarse  cry  for 
discipline !  The  reek  and  scandal  of  the  stock-yards 
is  really  only  a  gigantic  form  of  that  same  quality 
in  American  life  that,  in  a  minor  aspect,  makes  the 
sidewalk  filthy.  The  key  to  the  peculiar  nasty  ug 
liness  of  those  Schoellkopf  works  that  defile  the 
Niagara  gorge  is  the  same  quality.  The  detestable- 
ness  of  the  Elevated  railroads  of  Chicago  and  Boston 
and  New  York  have  this  in  common.  All  that  is 
ugly  in  America,  in  Lancashire,  in  South  and  East 
London,  in  the  Pas  de  Calais,  is  due  to  this,  to  the 
shoving  unintelligent  proceedings  of  underbred  and 
morally  obtuse  men.  Each  man  is  for  himself,  each 
enterprise;  there  is  no  order,  no  prevision,  no  com 
mon  and  universal  plan.  Modern  economic  organi- 

61 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

zation  is  still  as  yet  only  thinking  of  emerging  from 
its  first  chaotic  stage,  the  stage  of  lawless  enterprise 
and  insanitary  aggregation,  the  stage  of  the  pros 
pector's  camp.  .  .  . 

But  it  does  emerge. 

Men  are  makers — American  men,  I  think,  more 
than  most  men — and  amidst  even  the  catastrophic 
jumble  of  Chicago  one  finds  the  same  creative  forces 
at  work  that  are  struggling  to  replan  a  greater  Bos 
ton,  and  that  turned  a  waste  of  dumps  and  swamps 
and  cabbage-gardens  into  Central  Park,  New  York. 
Chicago  also  has  its  Parks  Commission  and  its  green 
avenues,  its  bright  flower-gardens,  its  lakes  and 
playing-fields.  Its  Midway  Plaisance  is  in  amazing 
contrast  with  the  dirt,  the  congestion,  the  moral 
disorder  of  its  State  Street;  its  Field  Houses  do 
visible  battle  with  slum  and  the  frantic  meanness  of 
commercial  folly. 

Field  Houses  are  peculiar  to  Chicago,  and  Chicago 
has  every  reason  to  be  proud  of  them.  I  visited  one 
that  is  positively  within  smell  of  the  stock- yards  and 
wedged  into  a  district  of  gaunt  and  dirty  slums.  It 
stands  in  the  midst  of  a  little  park,  and  close  by  it 
are  three  playing-grounds  with  swings  and  parallel 
bars  and  all  manner  of  athletic  appliances,  one  for 
little  children,  one  for  girls  and  women,  and  one 
for  boys  and  youths.  In  the  children's  place  is  a 
paddling-pond  of  clear,  clean,  running  water  and  a 
shaded  area  of  frequently  changed  sand,  and  in  the 
park  was  a  broad  asphalted  arena  that  can  be  flooded 

62 


STATE     STREET.     CHICAGO 


GROWTH   INVINCIBLE 

for  skating  in  winter.  All  this  is  free  to  all  comers, 
and  free  too  is  the  Field  House  itself.  This  is  a 
large,  cool  Italianate  place  with  two  or  three  reading- 
rooms — one  specially  arranged  for  children — a  big 
discussion-hall,  a  big  and  well-equipped  gymnasium, 
and  big,  free  baths  for  men  and  for  women.  There 
is  also  a  clean,  bright  refreshment-place  where  whole 
some  food  is  sold  just  above  cost  price.  It  was  early 
on  Friday  afternoon  when  I  saw  it  all,  but  the  place 
was  busy  with  children,  reading,  bathing,  playing  in 
a  hundred  different  ways. 

And  this  Field  House  is  not  an  isolated  philan 
thropic  enterprise.  It  is  just  one  of  a  number  that 
are  dotted  about  Chicago,  mitigating  and  civilizing 
its  squalor.  It  was  not  distilled  by  begging  and 
charity  from  the  stench  of  the  stock-yards  or  the 
reek  of  Standard  Oil.  It  is  part  of  the  normal  work 
of  a  special  taxing  body  created  by  the  legislature 
of  the  State  of  Illinois.  It  is  just  one  of  the  fruits 
upon  one  of  the  growths  that  spring  from  such  per 
sistent  creative  efforts  as  that  of  the  Chicago  City 
Club.  It  is  socialism  —  even  as  its  enemies  de 
clare.  .  .  . 

Even  amidst  the  sombre  uncleanliness  of  Chicago 
one  sees  the  light  of  a  new  epoch,  the  coming  of  new 
conceptions,  of  foresight,  of  large  collective  plans 
and  discipline  to  achieve  them,  the  fresh  green 
leaves,  among  all  the  festering  manure,  of  the 
giant  growths  of  a  more  orderly  and  more  beautiful 
age. 

63 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 


THESE  growing  towns,  these  giant 
Pennsylvania  towns  that  grow  up  and  out,  that 
grow  orderly  and  splendid  out  of  their 
first  chaotic  beginnings,  are  only  little  patches  upon 
a  vast  expanse,  upon  what  is  still  of  all  habit 
able  countries  the  emptiest  country  in  the  world. 
My  long  express  journey  from  Chicago  to  Washing 
ton  lasted  a  day  and  a  night  and  more,  I  could  get 
sooner  from  my  home  in  Kent  to  Italy,  and  yet  that 
was  still  well  under  a  third  of  the  way  across  the 
continent.  I  spent  most  of  my  daylight  time  in 
the  fine  and  graceful  open  loggia  at  the  end  of  the 
observation-car  or  in  looking  out  of  the  windows, 
looking  at  hills  and  valleys,  townships  and  quiet 
places,  sudden  busy  industrial  outbreaks  about  coal 
mine  or  metal,  big  undisciplined  rivers  that  spread 
into  swamp  and  lake,  new  forest  growths,  very 
bright  and  green  now,  foaming  up  above  blackened 
stumps.  There  were  many  cypress-trees  and  trees 
with  white  blossom  and  the  Judas-tree,  very  abun 
dant  among  the  spring-time  green.  I  got  still  more 
clearly  the  enormous  scale  of  this  American  destiny 
I  seek  to  discuss,  through  all  that  long  and  interest 
ing  day  of  transit.  I  measured,  as  it  seemed  to  me 
for  the  first  time,  the  real  scale  of  the  growth  proc 
ess  that  has  put  a  four  -  track  road  nine  hundred 
miles  across  this  exuberant  land  and  scarred  every 
available  hill  with  furnace  and  mine. 

64 


GROWTH   INVINCIBLE 

Bigness — that's  the  word!  The  very  fields  and 
farm-buildings  seem  to  me  to  have  four  times  the 
size  of  our  English  farms. 

Some  casual  suggestion  of  the  wayside,  I  forget 
now  what,  set  me  thinking  of  the  former  days,  so 
recent  that  they  are  yet  within  the  lifetime  of  living 
men,  when  this  was  frontier  land,  when  even  the 
middle  west  remained  to  be  won.  I  thought  of  the 
slow  diffusing  population  of  the  forties,  the  pioneer 
wagon,  the  men  armed  with  axe  and  rifle,  knife  and 
revolver,  the  fear  of  the  Indians,  the  weak  and 
casual  incidence  of  law.  Then  the  high-road  was 
but  a  prairie  track  and  all  these  hills  and  hidden 
minerals  unconquered  fastnesses  that  might,  it 
seemed,  hold  out  for  centuries  before  they  gave 
their  treasure.  How  quickly  things  had  come! 
"Progress,  progress,"  murmured  the  wheels,  and  I 
began  to  make  this  steady,  swift,  and  shiningly 
equipped  train  a  figure,  just  as  I  had  made  the 
Carmania  a  figure  of  that  big  onward  sweep  that 
is  moving  us  all  together.  It  was  not  a  noisy  train, 
after  the  English  fashion,  nor  did  the  cars  sway 
and  jump  after  the  habit  of  our  lighter  coaches,  but 
the  air  was  full  of  deep,  triumphant  rhythms.  "  It 
goes  on,"  I  said,  "invincibly,"  and  even  as  the 
thought  was  in  my  head,  the  brakes  set  up  a  dron 
ing,  a  vibration  ran  through  the  train  and  we  slowed 
and  stopped.  A  minute  passed,  and  then  we  rum 
bled  softly  back  to  a  little  trestle-bridge  and  stood 
there. 

65 


THE   FUTURE    IN   AMERICA 

I  got  up,  looked  from  the  window,  and  then  went 
to  the  platform  at  the  end  of  the  train.  I  found 
two  men,  a  passenger  and  a  colored  parlor-car  at 
tendant.  The  former  was  on  the  bottom  step  of 
the  car,  the  latter  was  supplying  him  with  infor 
mation. 

"His  head's  still  in  the  water,"  he  remarked. 

"Whose  head?"  said  I. 

"  A  man  we've  killed,"  said  he.  "  We  caught  him 
in  the  trestle-bridge." 

I  descended  a  step,  craned  over  my  fellow-pas 
senger,  and  saw  a  little  group  standing  curiously 
about  the  derelict  thing  that  had  been  a  living  man 
three  minutes  before.  It  was  now  a  crumpled, 
dark-stained  blue  blouse,  a  limply  broken  arm  with 
hand  askew,  trousered  legs  that  sprawled  quaintly, 
and  a  pair  of  heavy  boots,  lying  in  the  sunlit  fresh 
grass  by  the  water  below  the  trestle-bridge.  .  .  . 

A  man  on  the  line  gave  inadequate  explanations. 
"He'd  have  been  all  right  if  he  hadn't  come  over 
this  side,"  he  said. 

"Who  was  he?"  said  I. 

"One  of  these  Eyetalians  on  the  line,"  he  said, 
and  turned  away.  The  train  bristled  now  with  a 
bunch  of  curiosity  at  every  car  end,  and  even  win 
dows  were  opened.  .  .  . 

Presently  it  was  intimated  to  us  by  a  whistle  and 
the  hasty  return  of  men  to  the  cars  that  the  inci 
dent  had  closed.  We  began  to  move  forward  again, 
crept  up  to  speed.  .  .  . 

66 


GROWTH   INVINCIBLE 

But  I  could  not  go  on  with  my  conception  of  the 
train  as  a  symbol  of  human  advancement.  That 
crumpled  blue  blouse  and  queerly  careless  legs 
would  get  into  the  picture  and  set  up  all  sorts  of 
alien  speculations.  I  thought  of  distant  north 
Italian  valleys  and  brown  boys  among  the  vines 
and  goats,  of  the  immigrants  who  had  sung  remotely 
to  me  out  of  the  Carmania's  steerage,  of  the  hope 
ful  bright-eyed  procession  of  the  new-comers  through 
Ellis  Island  wicket,  of  the  regiments  of  workers  the 
line  had  shown  me,  and  I  told  myself  a  tale  of  this 
Italian's  journey  to  the  land  of  promise,  this  land 
of  gigantic  promises.  .  .  . 

For  a  time  the  big  spectacle  of  America  about  me 
took  on  a  quality  of  magnificent  infidelity.  .  .  . 

And  by  reason  of  this  incident  my  last  Image  of 
Material  Progress  thundered  into  Washington  sta 
tion  five  minutes  behind  its  scheduled  time. 


CHAPTER  V 
THE   ECONOMIC   PROCESS 


LET  me  try  now  and  make  some  sort 
A  Bview~Eve  of  general  picture  of  the  American 
nation  as  it  impresses  itself  upon  me. 
It  is,  you  will  understand,  the  vision  of  a  hurried 
bird  of  passage,  defective  and  inaccurate  at  every 
point  of  detail,  but  perhaps  for  my  present  purpose 
not  so  very  much  the  worse  for  that.  The  fact  that  I 
am  transitory  and  bring  a  sort  of  theorizing  naivete 
to  this  review  is  just  what  gives  me  the  chance  to  re 
mark  these  obvious  things  the  habituated  have  for 
gotten.  I  have  already  tried  to  render  something 
of  the  effect  of  huge  unrestrained  growth  and  ma 
terial  progress  that  America  first  gives  one,  and  I 
have  pointed  out  that  so  far  America  seems  to  me 
only  to  refresh  an  old  impression,  to  give  starkly 
and  startlingly  what  is  going  on  everywhere,  what 
is  indeed  as  much  in  evidence  in  Birkenhead  or 
Milan  or  London  or  Calcutta,  a  huge  extension 
of  human  power  and  the  scale  of  human  opera 
tions.  This  growth  was  elaborated  in  the  physical 

68 


THE    ECONOMIC   PROCESS 

and  chemical  laboratories  and  the  industrial  ex 
periments  of  the  eighteenth  and  early  nineteenth 
century,  and  chiefly  in  Europe.  The  extension  it 
self  is  nothing  typically  American.  Nevertheless 
America  now  shows  it  best.  America  is  most  un 
der  the  stress  and  urgency  of  it,  resonates  most 
readily  and  loudly  to  its  note. 

The  long  distances  of  travel,  and  the  sense  of 
isolation  between  place  and  place,  the  remoteness 
verging  upon  inaudibility  of  Washington  in  Chicago, 
of  Chicago  in  Boston,  the  vision  I  have  had  of 
America  from  observation  cars  and  railroad  win 
dows  brings  home  to  me  more  and  more  that  this 
huge  development  of  human  appliances  and  re 
sources  is  here  going  on  in  a  community  that  is 
still,  for  all  the  dense  crowds  of  New  York,  the 
teeming  congestion  of  the  East  Side,  extraordinarily 
scattered.  America,  one  recalls,  is  still  an  unoccu 
pied  country,  across  which  the  latest  developments  of 
civilization  are  rushing.  We  are  dealing  here  with 
a  continuous  area  of  land  which  is,  leaving  Alaska 
out  of  account  altogether,  equal  to  Great  Britain, 
France,  the  German  Empire,  the  Austro-Hungarian 
Empire,  Italy,  Belgium,  Japan,  Holland,  Spain  and 
Portugal,  Sweden  and  Norway,  Turkey  in  Europe, 
Egypt  and  the  whole  Empire  of  India,  and  the  popu 
lation  spread  out  over  this  vast  space  is  still  less 
than  the  joint  population  of  the  first  two  countries 
named  and  not  a  quarter  that  of  India.  Moreover, 
it  is  not  spread  at  all  evenly.  Much  of  it  is  in  un- 


THE   FUTURE   IN  AMERICA 

distributed  clots.  It  is  not  upon  the  soil,  barely  half 
of  it  is  in  holdings  and  homes  and  authentic  commu 
nities.  It  is  a  population  of  an  extremely  modern 
type.  Urban  concentration  has  already  gone  far  with 
it ;  fifteen  millions  of  it  are  crowded  into  and  about 
twenty  great  cities,  other  eighteen  millions  make  up 
five  hundred  towns.  Between  these  centres  of  popu 
lation  run  railways  indeed,  telegraph  wires,  telephone 
connections,  tracks  of  various  sorts,  but  to  the 
European  eye  these  are  mere  scratchings  on  a 
virgin  surface.  An  empty  wilderness  manifests  it 
self  through  this  thin  network  of  human  con 
veniences,  appears  in  the  meshes  even  at  the  rail 
road  side.  Essentially  America  is  still  an  unsettled 
land,  with  only  a  few  incidental  good  roads  in 
favored  places,  with  no  universal  police,  with  no 
wayside  inns  where  a  civilized  man  may  rest,  with 
still  only  the  crudest  of  rural  postal  deliveries,  with 
long  stretches  of  swamp  and  forest  and  desert  by 
the  track  side,  still  unassailed  by  industry.  This 
much  one  sees  clearly  enough  eastward  of  Chicago. 
Westward,  I  am  told,  it  becomes  more  and  more 
the  fact.  In  Idaho  at  last,  comes  the  untouched 
and  perhaps  invincible  desert,  plain  and  continu 
ous  through  the  long  hours  of  travel.  Huge  areas 
do  not  contain  one  human  being  to  the  square 
mile,  still  vaster  portions  fall  short  of  two.  .  .  . 

And  this  community,  to  which  material  progress 
is  bringing  such  enormous  powers,  and  that  is 
knotted  so  densely  here  and  there,  and  is  otherwise 

70 


THE    ECONOMIC  PROCESS 

so  attenuated  a  veil  over  the  huge  land  surface,  is,  as 
Professor  Miinsterberg  points  out,  in  spite  of  vast 
and  increasing  masses  of  immigrants  still  a  curiously 
homogeneous  one,  homogeneous  in  the  spirit  of  its 
activities  and  speaking  a  common  tongue.  It  is  sus 
tained  by  certain  economic  conventions,  inspired 
throughout  by  certain  habits,  certain  trends  of  sug 
gestion,  certain  phrases  and  certain  interpretations 
that  collectively  make  up  what  one  may  call  the 
American  Idea.  To  the  process  of  enlargement  and 
diffusion  and  increase  and  multiplying  resources,  we 
must  now  bring  the  consideration  of  the  social  and 
economic  process  that  is  going  on.  What  is  the 
form  of  that  process  as  one  finds  it  in  America? 
An  English  Tory  will  tell  you  promptly,  "a  scramble 
for  dollars."  A  good  American  will  tell  you  it  is 
self  realization  under  equality  of  opportunity.  The 
English  Tory  will  probably  allege  that  that  amounts 
to  the  same  thing. 
Let  us  look  into  that. 


II 

ONE  contrast  between  America  and 
the  old  world  I   had  in  mind  before 
ever  I  crossed  the  Atlantic,  and  now  it 
comes  before  me  very  vividly, — returns  reinforced 
by  a  hundred  little  things  observed  and  felt.     The 
contrast  consists  in  the  almost  complete  absence 

6  7I 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

from  the  normal  American  scheme,  of  certain  im 
memorial  factors  in  the  social  structure  of  our 
European  nations. 

In  the  first  place,  every  European  nation  except 
the  English  is  rooted  to  the  soil  by  a  peasantry,  and 
even  in  England  one  still  finds  the  peasant  repre 
sented,  in  most  of  his  features  by  those  sons  of  dis 
possessed  serf  -  peasants,  the  agricultural  laborers. 
Here  in  America,  except  in  the  regions  where  the 
negro  abounds,  there  is  no  lower  stratum,  no  "soil 
people,"  to  this  community  at  all;  your  bottom 
most  man  is  a  mobile  free  man  who  can  read,  and 
who  has  ideas  above  digging  and  pigs  and  poultry 
keeping,  except  incidentally  for  his  own  ends.  No 
one  owns  to  subordination.  As  a  consequence,  any 
position  which  involves  the  acknowledgment  of  an 
innate  inferiority  is  difficult  to  fill;  there  is,  from 
the  European  point  of  view,  an  extraordinary 
dearth  of  servants,  and  this  endures  in  spite  of  a 
great  peasant  immigration.  The  servile  tradition 
will  not  root  here  now,  it  dies  in  this  soil.  An 
enormous  importation  of  European  serfs  and  peas 
ants  goes  on,  but  as  they  touch  this  soil  their  backs 
begin  to  stiffen  with  a  new  assertion. 

And  at  the  other  end  of  the  scale,  also,  one  misses 
an  element.  There  is  no  territorial  aristocracy,  no 
aristocracy  at  all,  no  throne,  no  legitimate  and  ac 
knowledged  representative  of  that  upper  social 
structure  of  leisure,  power,  State  responsibility, 
which  in  the  old  European  theory  of  society  was 


THE   ECONOMIC   PROCESS 

supposed  to  give  significance  to  the  whole.  The 
American  community,  one  cannot  too  clearly  in 
sist,  does  not  correspond  to  an  entire  European 
community  at  all,  but  only  to  the  middle  masses  of 
it,  to  the  trading  and  manufacturing  class  between 
the  dimensions  of  the  magnate  and  the  clerk  and 
skilled  artisan.  It  is  the  central  part  of  the  Euro 
pean  organism  without  either  the  dreaming  head  or 
the  subjugated  feet.  Even  the  highly  feudal 
slave-holding  "county  family"  traditions  of  Vir 
ginia  and  the  South  pass  now  out  of  memory.  So 
that  in  a  very  real  sense  the  past  of  this  American 
community  is  in  Europe,  and  the  settled  order  of 
the  past  is  left  behind  there.  This  community  was, 
as  it  were,  taken  off  its  roots,  clipped  of  its  branches 
and  brought  hither.  It  began  neither  serf  nor  lord, 
but  burgher  and  farmer,  it  followed  the  normal  de 
velopment  of  the  middle  class  under  Progress  every 
where  and  became  capitalistic.  Essentially  America 
is  a  middle-class  become  a  community  and  so  its 
essential  problems  are  the  problems  of  a  modern 
individualistic  society,  stark  and  clear,  unhampered 
and  unilluminated  by  any  feudal  traditions  either 
at  its  crest  or  at  its  base. 

It  would  be  interesting  and  at  first  o,r^ly  very 
slightly  misleading  to  pursue  the  rough  contrast  of 
American  and  English  conditions  upon  these  lines. 
It  is  not  difficult  to  show  for  example,  that  the  two 
great  political  parties  in  America  represent  only 
one  English  party,  the  middle-class  Liberal  party, 

73 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

the  party  of  industrialism  and  freedom.  There  are 
no  Tories  to  represent  the  feudal  system,  and  no 
Labor  party.  It  is  history,  it  is  no  mere  ingenious 
gloss  upon  history,  that  the  Tories,  the  party  of  the 
crown,  of  the  high  gentry  and  control,  of  mitigated 
property  and  an  organic  state,  vanished  from 
America  at  the  Revolution.  They  left  the  new 
world  to  the  Whigs  and  Nonconformists  and  to 
those  less  constructive,  less  logical,  more  popular 
and  liberating  thinkers  who  became  Radicals  in 
England,  and  Jeffersonians  and  then  Democrats  in 
America.  All  Americans  are,  from  the  English 
point  of  view,  Liberals  of  one  sort  or  another.  You 
will  find  a  fac-simile  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde 
pendence  displayed  conspicuously  and  trium 
phantly  beside  Magna  Charter  in  the  London  Re 
form  Club,  to  carry  out  this  suggestion. 

But  these  fascinating  parallelisms  will  lead  away 
from  the  chief  argument  in  hand,  which  is  that  the 
Americans  started  almost  clear  of  the  medieval 
heritage,  and  developed  in  the  utmost — purity  if 
you  like  —  or  simplicity  or  crudeness,  whichever 
you  will,  the  modern  type  of  productive  social 
organization.  They  took  the  economic  conven 
tions  that  were  modern  and  progressive  at  the 
end  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  stamped  them 
into  the  Constitution  as  if  they  meant  to  stamp 
them  there  for  all  time.  In  England  you  can  still 
find  feudalism,  medievalism,  the  Renascence,  at 
every  turn.  America  is  pure  eighteenth  century 

74 


THE    ECONOMIC   PROCESS 

— still  crystallizing  out  from  a  turbid  and  troubled 
solution. 

To  turn  from  any  European  state  to  America  is, 
in  these  matters  anyhow,  to  turn  from  complica 
tion  to  a  stark  simplicity.  The  relationship  be 
tween  employer  and  employed,  between  organizer 
and  worker,  between  capital  and  labor,  which  in 
England  is  qualified  and  mellowed  and  disguised 
and  entangled  with  a  thousand  traditional  attitudes 
and  subordinations,  stands  out  sharply  in  a  bleak 
cold  rationalism.  There  is  no  feeling  that  property, 
privilege,  honor,  and  a  grave  liability  to  official  pub 
lic  service  ought  to  go  together,  none  that  uncriti 
cal  obedience  is  a  virtue  in  a  worker  or  that  sub 
ordination  carries  with  it  not  only  a  sense  of  service 
but  a  claim  for  help.  Coming  across  the  Atlantic 
has  in  these  matters  an  effect  of  coming  out  of  an 
iridescent  fog  into  a  clear  bright  air. 

This  homologization  of  the  whole  American  social 
mass,  not  with  the  whole  English  social  mass,  but 
with  its  "modern"  classes,  its  great  middle  portion, 
and  of  its  political  sides  with  the  two  ingredients  of 
English  Liberalism,  goes  further  than  a  rough  par 
allel.  An  Englishman  who,  like  myself,  has  been 
bred  and  who  has  lived  all  his  life  either  in  London, 
with  its  predominant  West -End,  or  the  southern 
counties  with  their  fair  large  estates  and  the  great 
country  houses,  is  constantly  being  reminded,  when 
he  meets  manufacturing  and  business  men  from 
Birmingham  or  Lancashire,  of  Americans,  and  when 

75 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

he  meets  Americans,  of  industrial  North  -  country 
people.  There  is  more  push  and  less  tacit  assump 
tion,  more  definition,  more  displayed  energy  and 
less  restraint,  more  action  and  less  subtlety,  more 
enterprise  and  self-assertion  than  there  is  in  the 
typical  Englishman  of  London  and  the  home  coun 
ties.  The  American  carries  on  the  contrast  fur 
ther,  it  is  true,  and  his  speech  is  not  northernly, 
but  marked  by  the  accent  of  Hampshire  or  East 
Anglia,  and  better  and  clearer  than  his  English 
equivalent's;  but  one  feels  the  two  are  of  the  same 
stuff,  nevertheless,  and  made  by  parallel  conditions. 
The  liberalism  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  ma 
terial  progress  of  the  nineteenth  have  made  them 
both — out  of  the  undifferentiated  Stuart  English* 
man.  And  they  are  the  same  in  their  attitude 
towards  property  and  social  duty,  individualists  to 
the  marrow.  But  the  one  grew  inside  a  frame  of 
regal,  aristocratic,  and  feudal  institutions,  and  has 
chafed  against  it,  struggled  with  it,  modified  it, 
strained  it,  and  been  modified  by  it,  but  has  re 
mained  within  it ;  the  other  broke  it  and  escaped  to 
complete  self-development. 

The  liberalism  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  es 
sentially  the  rebellion  of  the  modern  industrial  or 
ganization  against  the  monarchial  and  aristocratic 
State, — against  hereditary  privilege,  against  restric 
tions  upon  bargains — whether  they  were  hard  bar 
gains  or  not.  Its  spirit  was  essentially  Anarchistic, 
— the  antithesis  of  Socialism.  It  was  the  anti-State. 


THE    ECONOMIC   PROCESS 

It  aimed  not  only  to  liberate  men  but  property 
from  State  control.  Its  most  typical  expressions, 
the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and  the  French 
Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man,  are  zealously  em 
phatic  for  the  latter  interest — for  the  sacredness  of 
contracts  and  possessions.  Post  Reformation  lib 
eralism  did  to  a  large  extent  let  loose  property  up 
on  mankind.  The  English  Civil  War  of  the  seven 
teenth  century,  like  the  American  revolution  of  the 
eighteenth,  embodied  essentially  the  triumphant 
refusal  of  private  property  to  submit  to  taxation 
without  consent.  In  England  the  result  was  tem 
pered  and  qualified,  security  for  private  property 
was  achieved,  but  not  cast-iron  security;  each  man 
who  had  property  became  king  of  that  property, 
but  only  a  constitutional  and  conditional  king.  In 
America  the  victory  of  private  property  was  com 
plete.  Let  one  instance  suffice  to  show  how  de 
cisively  it  was  established  that  individual  property 
and  credit  and  money  were  sacred.  Ten  years  ago 
the  Supreme  Court,  trying  a  case  arising  out  of  the 
General  Revenue  tax  of  1894,  decided  that  a  gradu 
ated  income-tax,  such  as  the  English  Parliament 
might  pass  to-morrow,  can  never  be  levied  upon 
the  United  States  nation  without  a  change  in  the 
Constitution,  which  can  be  effected  only  by  a  vote 
of  two-thirds  of  both  Houses  of  Congress  as  an  in 
itiative,  and  this  must  be  ratified  either  by  the  leg 
islatures  of  three-fourths  of  the  States,  or  by  special 
conventions  representing  three-fourths  of  the  States 

77 


THE   FUTURE    IN   AMERICA 

The  fundamental  law  of  the  States  forbids  any  such 
invasion  of  the  individual's  ownership.  No  national 
income-tax  is  legal,  and  there  is  practically  no  power, 
short  of  revolution,  to  alter  that.  .  .  . 

Could  anything  be  more  emphatic?  That  tall 
Liberty  with  its  spiky  crown  that  stands  in  New 
York  Harbor  and  casts  an  electric  flare  upon  the 
world,  is,  indeed,  the  liberty  of  Property,  and  there 
she  stands  at  the  Zenith.  , 


in 

Now  the  middle-class  of  the  English 
li?d  Some      population  and  the  whole  population 

Protests  f    M 

of  America  that  matters  at  all  when  we 
discuss  ideas,  is  essentially  an  emancipated  class,  a 
class  that  has  rebelled  against  superimposed  privi 
lege  and  honor,  and  achieved  freedom  for  its  indi 
viduals  and  their  property.  Without  property  its 
freedom  is  a  featureless  and  unsubstantial  theory, 
and  so  it  relies  for  the  reality  of  life  upon  that,  upon 
the  possession  and  acquisition  and  development  of 
property,  that  is  to  say  upon  "business."  That 
is  the  quality  of  its  life. 

Everywhere  in  the  modern  industrial  and  com 
mercial  class  this  deep-lying  feeling  that  the  State 
is  something  escaped  from,  has  worked  out  to  the 
same  mental  habit  of  social  irresponsibility,  and 
in  America  it  has  worked  unimpeded.  Patriotism 

78 


THE    ECONOMIC  PROCESS 

has  become  a  mere  national  self-assertion,  a  sen 
timentality  of  flag  cheering,  with  no  constructive 
duties.  Law,  social  justice,  the  pride  and  preserva 
tion  of  the  state  as  a  whole  are  taken  as  provided 
for  before  the  game  began,  and  one  devotes  one 
self  to  business.  At  business  all  men  are  held  to 
be  equal,  and  none  is  his  brother's  keeper. 

All  men  are  equal  at  the  great  game  of  business. 
You  try  for  the  best  of  each  bargain  and  so  does 
your  opponent ;  if  you  chance  to  have  more  in  your 
hand  than  he — well,  that's  your  advantage,  and  you 
use  it.  Presently  he  may  have  more  than  you. 
You  take  care  he  doesn't  if  you  can,  but  you  play 
fair — except  for  the  advantage  in  your  hand;  you 
play  fair — and  hard. 

Now  this  middle -class  equality  ultimately  de 
stroys  itself.  Out  of  this  conflict  of  equals,  and  by 
virtue  of  the  fact  that  property,  like  all  sorts  of 
matter,  does  tend  to  gravitate  towards  itself  when 
ever  it  is  free,  there  emerge  the  modern  rich  and 
the  modern  toiler. 

One  can  trace  the  process  in  two  or  three  gen 
erations  in  Lancashire  or  the  Potteries,  or  any  in 
dustrial  region  of  England.  One  sees  first  the  early 
Lancashire  industrialism,  sees  a  district  of  cotton- 
spinners  more  or  less  equal  together,  small  men  all; 
then  come  developments,  comes  a  state  of  ideally 
free  competition  with  some  men  growing  large,  with 
most  men  dropping  into  employment,  but  still  with 
ample  chances  for  an  industrious  young  man  to 

79 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

end  as  a  prosperous  master;  and  so  through  a 
steady  growth  in  the  size  of  the  organization  to  the 
present  opposition  of  an  employer  class  in  posses 
sion  of  everything,  almost  inaccessibly  above,  and 
an  employed  class  below.  The  railways  come,  and 
the  wealthy  class  reaches  out  to  master  these  new 
enterprises,  capitalistic  from  the  outset.  .  .  . 

America  is  simply  repeating  the  history  of  the 
Lancashire  industrialism  on  a  gigantic  scale,  and 
under  an  enormous  variety  of  forms. 

But  in  England,  as  the  modern  Rich  rise  up,  they 
come  into  a  world  of  gentry  with  a  tradition  of 
public  service  and  authority ;  they  learn  one  by  one 
and  assimilate  themselves  to  the  legend  of  the 
" governing  class"  with  a  sense  of  proprietorship 
which  is  also,  in  its  humanly  limited  way,  a  sense 
of  duty  to  the  state.  They  are  pseudomorphs  after 
aristocrats.  They  receive  honors,  they  inter-marry, 
they  fall  (and  their  defeated  competitors  too  fall) 
into  the  mellowed  relationships  of  an  aristocratic 
system.  That  is  not  a  permanent  mutual  attitude ; 
it  does,  however,  mask  and  soften  the  British  out 
line.  Industrialism  becomes  quasi-feudal.  America, 
on  the  other  hand,  had  no  effectual  "governing 
class,"  there  has  been  no  such  modification,  no 
clouding  of  the  issue.  Its  Rich,  to  one's  superficial 
inspection,  do  seem  to  lop  out,  swell  up  into  an  im 
mense  consumption  and  power  and  inanity,  de 
velop  no  sense  of  public  duties,  remain  winners  of  a 
strange  game  they  do  not  criticise,  concerned  now 

80 


THE   ECONOMIC   PROCESS 

only  to  hold  and  intensify  their  winnings.  The 
losers  accept  no  subservience.  That  material  prog 
ress,  that  secular  growth  in  scale  of  all  modern 
enterprises,  widens  the  gulf  between  Owner  and 
Worker  daily.  More  and  more  do  men  realize  that 
this  game  of  free  competition  and  unrestricted 
property  does  not  go  on  for  ever ;  it  is  a  game  that 
first  in  this  industry  and  then  in  that,  and  at  last 
in  all,  can  be  played  out  and  is  being  played  out. 
Property  becomes  organized,  consolidated,  con 
centrated,  and  secured.  This  is  the  fact  to  which 
America  is  slowly  awaking  at  the  present  time. 
The  American  community  is  discovering  a  secular 
extinction  of  opportunity,  and  the  appearance  of 
powers  against  which  individual  enterprise  and 
competition  are  hopeless.  Enormous  sections  of 
the  American  public  are  losing  their  faith  in  any 
personal  chance  of  growing  rich  and  truly  free,  and 
are  developing  the  consciousness  of  an  expropriated 
class. 

This  realization  has  come  slowlier  in  America 
than  in  Europe,  because  of  the  enormous  unde 
veloped  resources  of  America.  So  long  as  there 
was  an  unlimited  extent  of  unappropriated  and 
unexplored  land  westward,  so  long  could  tension  be 
relieved  by  so  simple  an  injunction  as  Horace 
Greeley's,  "Go  West,  young  man;  go  West."  And 
to-day,  albeit  that  is  no  longer  true  of  the  land, 
and  there  are  already  far  larger  concentrations  of 
individual  possessions  in  the  United  States  of 

81 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

America  than  anywhere  else  in  the  world,  yet  so 
vast  are  their  continental  resources  that  it  still  re 
mains  true  that  nowhere  in  the  world  is  proper 
ty  so  widely  diffused.  Consider  the  one  fact  that 
America  can  take  in  three-quarters  of  a  million  of 
workers  in  one  year  without  producing  a  perceptible 
fall  in  wages,  and  you  will  appreciate  the  scale 
upon  which  things  are  measured  here,  the  scale  by 
which  even  Mr.  J.  D.  Rockefeller's  billion  dollars 
becomes  no  more  than  a  respectable  but  by  no 
means  overwhelming  "pile."  For  all  these  con 
centrations,  the  western  farmers  still  own  their 
farms,  and  it  is  the  rule  rather  than  the  exception 
for  a  family  to  possess  the  freehold  of  the  house  it 
lives  in.  But  the  process  of  concentration  goes  on 
nevertheless — is  going  on  now  perceptibly  to  the 
American  mind.  That  it  has  not  gone  so  far  as  in 
the  European  instance  it  is  a  question  of  size,  just 
as  the  gestation  of  an  elephant  takes  longer  than 
that  of  a  mouse.  If  the  process  is  larger  and 
slower,  it  is,  for  the  reasons  I  have  given,  plainer, 
and  it  will  be  discussed  and  dealt  with  plainly. 
That  steady  trend  towards  concentration  under  in 
dividualistic  rules,  until  individual  competition  be 
comes  disheartened  and  hopeless,  is  the  essential 
form  of  the  economic  and  social  process  in  America 
as  I  see  it  now,  and  it  has  become  the  cardinal  topic 
of  thought  and  discussion  in  the  American  mind. 

This  realization  has  been  reached  after  the  most 
curious  hesitation.     There  is  every  reason  for  this; 


THE   ECONOMIC   PROCESS 

for  it  involves  the  contradiction  of  much  that  seems 
fundamental  in  the  American  idea.  It  amounts 
to  a  national  change  of  attitude.  It  is  a  con 
scious  change  of  attitude  that  is  being  deliberately 
made. 

This  slow  reluctant  process  of  disillusionment 
with  individualism  is  interestingly  traceable  through 
the  main  political  innovations  of  the  last  twenty 
years.  There  was  the  discovery  in  the  east  that 
the  supply  of  land  was  not  limitless,  and  we  had 
the  Single  Tax  movement,  and  the  epoch  of  the 
first  Mr.  Henry  George.  He  explained  fervently 
of  course,  how  individualistic,  how  profoundly 
American  he  was — but  land  was  not  to  be  monopo 
lized.  Then  came  the  discovery  in  the  west  that 
there  were  limits  to  borrowing  and  that  gold  ap 
preciated  against  the  debtor,  and  so  we  have  the 
Populist  movement  and  extraordinary  schemes  for 
destroying  the  monopolization  of  gold  and  credit. 
Mr.  Bryan  led  that  and  nearly  captured  the  coun 
try,  but  only  in  last  May's  issue  of  the  Century 
Magazine  I  found  him  explaining  (expounding 
meanwhile  a  largely  socialistic  programme)  that  he 
too  is  an  Individualist  of  the  purest  water.  And 
then  the  attack  shifted  to  the  destruction  of  free 
competition  by  the  trusts.  The  small  business 
went  on  sufferance,  not  knowing  from  week  to 
week  when  its  hour  to  sell  out  or  fight  might  come. 
The  Trusts  have  crushed  competition,  raised  prices 
against  the  consumer,  and  served  him  often  quite 

83 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

abominably.  The  curious  reader  may  find  in  Mr. 
Upton  Sinclair's  essentially  veracious  Jungle  the 
possibilities  of  individualistic  enterprise  in  the  mat 
ter  of  food  and  decency.  The  States  have  been 
agitated  by  a  big  disorganized  Anti-Trust  movement 
for  some  years,  it  becomes  of  the  gravest  political 
importance  at  every  election,  and  the  sustained 
study  of  the  affairs  and  methods  of  that  most 
typical  and  prominent  of  trust  organizations,  the 
Standard  Oil  Company,  by  Miss  Tarbell  and  a  host 
of  followers,  is  bringing  to  light  more  and  more 
clearly  the  defencelessness  of  the  common  person, 
and  his  hopelessness,  however  enterprising,  as  a 
competitor  against  those  great  business  aggrega 
tions.  His  faith  in  all  his  reliances  and  securities 
fades  in  the  new  light  that  grows  about  him,  he 
sees  his  little  investments,  his  insurance  policy,  his 
once  open  and  impartial  route  to  market  by  steam 
boat  and  rail,  all  passing  into  the  grip  of  the 
great  property  accumulators.  The  aggregation  of 
property  has  created  powers  that  are  stronger 
than  state  legislatures  and  more  persistent  than 
any  public  opinion  can  be,  that  have  no  awe 
and  no  sentiment  for  legislation,  that  are  pre 
pared  to  disregard  it  or  evade  it  whenever  they 
can. 

And  these  aggregations  are  taking  on  immor 
tality  and  declining  to  disintegrate  when  their 
founders  die.  The  Astor  property,  the  Jay  Gould 
property,  the  Marshall  Field  property,  for  example, 

84 


THE    ECONOMIC   PROCESS 

do  not  break  up,  become  undying  centres  for  the 
concentration  of  wealth,  and  it  is  doubtful  if  there 
is  any  power  to  hinder  such  a  development  of  per 
petual  fortunes.  In  England  when  Thelussen  left 
his  investments  to  accumulate,  a  simple  little  act  of 
Parliament  set  his  will  aside.  But  Congress  is  not 
sovereign,  there  is  no  national  sovereign  power  in 
America,  and  Property  in  America,  it  would  seem, 
is  absolutely  free  to  do  these  things.  So  you  have 
President  Roosevelt  in  a  recent  oration  attacking 
the  man  with  the  Muck  Rake  (who  gathered  vile 
dross  for  the  love  of  it),  and  threatening  the  limita 
tion  of  inheritance.  But  he  too,  quite  as  much  as 
Mr.  Bryan,  assures  the  public  that  he  is  a  fervent 
individualist. 

So  in  this  American  community,  whose  distinc 
tive  conception  is  its  emphatic  assertion  of  the  free 
dom  of  individual  property,  whose  very  symbol  is 
that  spike-crowned  Liberty  gripping  a  torch  in 
New  York  Harbor,  there  has  been  and  is  going  on 
a  successive  repudiation  of  that  freedom  in  almost 
every  department  of  ownable  things  by  consider 
able  masses  of  thinking  people,  a  denial  of  the 
soundness  of  individual  property  in  land,  an  or 
ganized  attempt  against  the  accumulation  of  gold 
and  credit,  by  a  systematic  watering  of  the  cur 
rency,  a  revolt  against  the  aggregatory  outcome  of 
untrammelled  business  competition,  a  systematic 
interference  with  the  freedom  of  railways  and  car 
riers  to  do  business  as  they  please,  and  a  protest 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

from  the  most  representative  of  Americans  against 
hereditary  wealth.  .  .  . 

That,  in  general  terms,  is  the  economic  and 
social  process  as  one  sees  it  in  America  now,  a  proc 
ess  of  systematically  concentrating  wealth  on  the 
part  of  an  energetic  minority,  and  of  a  great  in- 
surgence  of  alarm,  of  waves  of  indignation  and 
protest  and  threat  on  the  part  of  that  vague  in 
definite  public  that  Mr.  Roosevelt  calls  the  ''na 
tion." 

And  this  goes  on  side  by  side  with  a  process  of 
material  progress  that  partly  masks  its  quality, 
that  keeps  the  standard  of  life  from  falling  and 
prevents  any  sense  of  impoverishment  among  the 
mass  of  the  losers  in  the  economic  struggle.  Through 
this  material  progress  there  is  a  constant  substitu 
tion  of  larger,  cleaner,  more  efficient  possibilities, 
and  more  and  more  wholesale  and  far-sighted 
methods  of  organization  for  the  dark,  confused,  un 
tidy  individualistic  expedients  of  the  Victorian 
time.  An  epoch  which  was  coaly  and  mechanical, 
commercial  and  adventurous  after  the  earlier 
fashion  is  giving  place,  almost  automatically,  to 
one  that  will  be  electrical  and  scientific,  artistic  and 
creative.  The  material  progress  due  to  a  secular 
increase  in  knowledge,  and  the  economic  progress 
interfere  and  combine  with  and  complicate  one  an 
other,  the  former  constantly  changes  the  forms  and 
appliances  of  the  latter,  changes  the  weapons  and 
conditions,  and  may  ultimately  change  the  spirit 

86 


THE   ECONOMIC  PROCESS 

and  conceptions  of  the  struggle.  The  latter  now 
clogs  and  arrests  the  former.  So  in  its  broad  feat 
ures,  as  a  conflict  between  the  birth  strength  of  a 
splendid  civilization  and  a  hampering  commercial 
ism,  I  see  America. 

7 


CHAPTER  VI 
SOME  ASPECTS   OF  AMERICAN    WEALTH 


IT  is  obvious  that  in  a  community 
The  Spenders  that  has  disavowed  aristocracy  or  rule 
and  subordination  or  service,  which 
has  granted  unparalleled  freedoms  to  property  and 
despised  and  distrusted  the  state,  the  chief  business 
of  life  will  consist  in  getting  or  attempting  to  get. 
But  the  chief  aspect  of  American  life  that  impinges 
first  upon  the  European  is  not  this,  but  the  be 
havior  of  a  certain  overflow  at  the  top,  of  people 
who  have  largely  and  triumphantly  got,  and  with 
hand,  pockets,  safe-deposit  vaults  full  of  dollars, 
are  proceeding  to  realize  victory.  Before  I  came  to 
America  it  was  in  his  capacity  of  spender  that  I 
chiefly  knew  the  American;  as  a  person  who  had 
demoralized  Regent  Street  and  the  Rue  de  Rivoli, 
who  had  taught  the  London  cabman  to  demand 
"arf  a  dollar "  for  a  shilling  fare,  who  bought  old 
books  and  old  castles,  and  had  driven  the  prices 
of  old  furniture  to  incredible  altitudes,  and  was 
slowly  transferring  our  incubus  of  artistic  achieve- 

88 


SOME   ASPECTS   OF   AMERICAN   WEALTH 

ment  to  American  soil.  One  of  my  friends  in  Lon 
don  is  Mr.  X,  who  owns  those  two  houses  full  of 
fine  "pieces"  near  the  British  Museum  and  keeps 
his  honor  unsullied  in  the  most  deleterious  of 
trades.  "They  come  to  me,"  he  said,  "and  ask 
me  to  buy  for  them.  It's  just  buying.  One  of 
them  wants  to  beat  the  silver  of  another,  doesn't 
care  what  he  pays.  Another  clamors  for  tapestry. 
They  trust  me  as  they  trust  a  doctor.  There's  no 
understanding — no  feeling.  It's  hard  to  treat  them 
well." 

And  there  is  the  story  of  Y,  who  is  wise  about 
pictures.  "If  you  want  a  Botticelli  that  size,  Mr. 
Record,  I  can't  find  it,"  he  said;  "you'll  have  to 
have  it  made  for  you." 

These  American  spenders  have  got  the  whole 
world  "beat"  at  the  foolish  game  of  collecting,  and 
in  all  the  peculiar  delights  of  shopping  they  excel. 
And  they  are  the  crown  and  glory  of  hotel  managers 
throughout  the  world.  There  is  something  naive, 
something  childishly  expectant  and  acquisitive, 
about  this  aspect  of  American  riches.  There  ap 
pears  no  aristocracy  in  their  tradition,  no  sense  of 
permanence  and  great  responsibility,  there  appears 
no  sense  of  subordination  and  service;  from  the  in 
dividualistic  business  struggle  they  have  emerged 
triumphant,  and  what  is  there  to  do  now  but  spend 
and  have  a  good  time  ? 

They  swarm  in  the  pleasant  places  of  the  Riviera, 
they  pervade  Paris  and  Rome,  they  occupy  Scotch 

89 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

castles  and  English  estates,  their  motor-cars  are 
terrible  and  wonderful.  And  the  London  Savoy 
Hotel  still  flaunts  its  memory  of  one  splendid 
American  night.  The  court-yard  was  flooded  with 
water  tinted  an  artistic  blue — to  the  great  discom 
fort  of  the  practically  inevitable  gold-fish,  and  on 
this  floated  a  dream  of  a  gondola.  And  in  the  gon 
dola  the  table  was  spread  and  served  by  the  Savoy 
staff,  mysteriously  disguised  in  appropriate  fancy 
costume.  The  whole  thing — there's  only  two  words 
for  it — was  " perfectly  lovely."  "The  illusion" — 
whatever  that  was — we  are  assured,  was  complete. 
It  wasn't  a  nursery  treat,  you  know.  The  guests, 
I  am  told,  were  important  grown-up  people. 

This  sort  of  childishness,  of  course,  has  nothing 
distinctively  American  in  it.  Any  people  of  slug 
gish  and  uneducated  imagination  who  find  them 
selves  profusely  wealthy,  and  are  too  stupid  to  un 
derstand  the  huge  moral  burden,  the  burden  of 
splendid  possibilities  it  carries,  may  do  things  of 
this  sort.  It  was  not  Americans  but  a  party  of 
South-African  millionaires  who  achieved  the  kindred 
triumph  of  the  shirt-and-belt  dinner  under  a  tent 
in  a  London  hotel  dining-room.  The  glittering  pro 
cession  of  carriages  and  motor-carriages  which  I 
watched  driving  down  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York, 
apparently  for  the  pleasure  of  driving  up  again,  is 
to  be  paralleled  on  the  Pincio,  in  Naples,  in  Paris, 
and  anywhere  where  irresponsible  pleasure-seekers 
gather  together.  After  the  naive  joy  of  buying 

90 


SOME   ASPECTS   OF   AMERICAN   WEALTH 

things  comes  the  joy  of  wearing  them  publicly,  the 
simple  pleasure  of  the  promenade.  These  things 
are  universals.  But  nowhere  has  this  spending 
struck  me  as  being  so  solid  and  substantial,  so 
nearly  twenty-two  carats  fine,  as  here.  The  shops 
have  an  air  of  solid  worth,  are  in  the  key  of  butlers, 
bishops,  opera-boxes,  high-class  florists,  powdered 
footmen,  Roman  beadles,  motor-broughams,  to  an 
extent  that  altogether  outshines  either  Paris  or 
London. 

And  in  such  great  hotels  as  the  Waldorf-Astoria, 
one  finds  the  new  arrivals,  the  wives  and  daugh 
ters  from  the  West  and  the  South,  in  new,  bright 
hats,  and  splendors  of  costume,  clubbed  together, 
under  the  discreetest  management,  for  this  and 
that,  learning  how  to  spend  collectively,  reaching 
out  to  assemblies,  to  dinners.  From  an  observant 
tea-table  beneath  the  fronds  of  a  palm,  I  surveyed 
a  fine  array  of  these  plump  and  pretty  pupils  of 
extravagance.  They  were  for  the  most  part  quite 
brilliantly  as  well  as  newly  dressed,  and  with  an 
artless  and  pleasing  unconsciousness  of  the  living 
from  inside.  Smart  innocents!  I  found  all  that 
gathering  most  contagiously  interested  and  happy 
and  fresh. 

And  I  watched  spending,  too,  as  one  sees  it  in 
the  various  incompatible  houses  of  upper  Fifth 
Avenue  and  along  the  border  of  Central  Park. 
That,  too,  suggests  a  shop,  a  shop  where  country 
houses  are  sold  and  stored;  there  is  the  Tiffany 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

house,  a  most  expensive  -  looking  article,  on  the 
shelf,  and  the  Carnegie  house.  There  had  been 
no  pretence  on  the  part  of  the  architects  that  any 
house  belonged  in  any  sense  to  any  other,  that  any 
sort  of  community  held  them  together.  The  link 
is  just  spending.  You  come  to  New  York  and 
spend;  you  go  away  again.  To  some  of  these  pal 
aces  people  came  and  went ;  others  had  their  blinds 
down  and  conveyed  a  curious  effect  of  a  sunlit 
child  excursionist  in  a  train  who  falls  asleep  and 
droops  against  his  neighbor.  One  of  the  Vander- 
bilt  houses  was  frankly  and  brutally  boarded  up. 
Newport,  I  am  told,  takes  up  and  carries  on  the 
same  note  of  magnificent  irresponsibility,  and  there 
one  admires  the  richest  forms  of  simplicity,  tri 
umphs  of  villa  architecture  in  thatch,  and  bathing 
bungalows  in  marble.  .  .  . 

There  exists  already,  of  these  irresponsible  Amer 
ican  rich,  a  splendid  group  of  portraits,  done  with 
out  extenuation  and  without  malice,  in  the  later 
work  of  that  great  master  of  English  fiction,  Mr. 
Henry  James.  There  one  sees  them  at  their  best, 
their  refinement,  their  large  wealthiness,  their  in 
credible  unreality.  I  think  of  The  Ambassadors 
and  that  mysterious  source  of  the  income  of  the 
Newcomes,  a  mystery  that,  with  infinite  artistic 
tact,  was  never  explained ;  but  more  I  think  of  The 
Golden  Bowl,  most  spacious  and  serene  of  novels. 

In  that  splendid  and  luminous  bubble,  the  Prince 
Amerigo  and  Maggie  Verver,  Mr.  Verver,  that  as- 

92 


SOME   ASPECTS  OF  AMERICAN   WEALTH 

siduous  collector,  and  the  adventurous  Charlotte 
Stant  float  far  above  a  world  of  toil  and  anxiety, 
spending  with  a  large  refinement,  with  a  perfected 
assurance  and  precision.  They  spend  as  flowers 
open.  But  this  is  the  quintessence,  the  sublima 
tion,  the  idealization  of  the  rich  American.  Few 
have  the  restraint  for  this.  For  the  rest,  when  one 
has  shopped  and  shopped,  and  collected  and  bought 
everything,  and  promenaded  on  foot,  in  motor-car 
and  motor-brougham  and  motor-boat,  in  yacht  and 
special  train ;  when  one  has  a  fine  house  here  and  a 
fine  house  there,  and  photography  and  the  special 
article  have  exhausted  admiration,  there  remains 
chiefly  that  one  broader  and  more  presumptuous 
pleasure — spending  to  give.  American  givers  give 
most  generously,  and  some  of  them,  it  must  be  ad 
mitted,  give  well.  But  they  give  individually,  in 
coherently,  each  pursuing  a  personal  ideal.  There 
are  unsuccessful  givers.  .  .  . 

American  cities  are  being  littered  with  a  disorder 
of  unsystematized  foundations  and  picturesque 
legacies,  much  as  I  find  my  nursery  floor  littered 
with  abandoned  toys  and  battles  and  buildings 
when  the  children  are  in  bed  after  a  long,  wet  day. 
Yet  some  of  the  gifts  are  very  splendid  things. 
There  is,  for  example,  the  Leland  Stanford  Junior 
University  in  California,  a  vast  monument  of  pa 
rental  affection  and  Richardsonian  architecture, 
with  professors,  and  teaching  going  on  in  its  in 
terstices;  and  there  is  Mrs.  Gardner's  delightful 

93 


THE   FUTURE    IN   AMERICA 

Fenway  Court,  a  Venetian  palace,  brought  almost 
bodily  from  Italy  and  full  of  finely  gathered  treas 
ures.  .  .  . 

All  this  giving  is,  in  its  aggregate  effect,  as  con 
fused  as  industrial  Chicago.  It  presents  no  clear 
scheme  of  the  future,  promises  no  growth ;  it  is  due 
to  the  impulsive  generosity  of  a  mob  of  wealthy 
persons,  with  no  broad  common  conceptions,  with 
no  collective  dream,  with  little  to  hold  them  to 
gether  but  imitation  and  the  burning  possession  of 
money;  the  gifts  overlap,  they  lie  at  any  angle,  one 
with  another.  Some  are  needless,  some  mischiev 
ous.  There  are  great  gaps  of  unfulfilled  need  be 
tween. 

And  through  the  multitude  of  lesser,  though  still 
mighty,  givers,  comes  that  colossus  of  property, 
Mr.  Andrew  Carnegie,  the  jubilee  plunger  of  benefi 
cence,  that  rosy,  gray-haired,  nimble  little  figure, 
going  to  and  fro  between  two  continents,  scatter 
ing  library  buildings  as  if  he  sowed  wild  oats,  build 
ings  that  may  or  may  not  have  some  educational 
value,  if  presently  they  are  reorganized  and  proper 
ly  stocked  with  books.  Anon  he  appals  the  thrifty 
burgesses  of  Dunfermline  with  vast  and  uncongenial 
responsibilities  of  expenditure;  anon  he  precipitates 
the  library  of  the  late  Lord  Acton  upon  our  em 
barrassed  Mr.  Morley;  anon  he  pauperizes  the 
students  of  Scotland.  He  diffuses  his  monument 
throughout  the  English-speaking  lands,  amid  cir 
cumstances  of  the  most  flagrant  publicity;  the  re- 

94 


SOME   ASPECTS   OF   AMERICAN   WEALTH 

ceptive  learned,  the  philanthropic  noble,  bow  in 
expectant  swaths  before  him.  He  is  the  American 
fable  come  true;  nothing  seems  too  wild  to  believe 
of  him,  and  he  fills  the  European  imagination  with 
an  altogether  erroneous  conception  of  the  self-dissi 
pating  quality  in  American  wealth. 


ii 

BECAUSE,  now,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
dissipation  is  by  no  means  the  charac 
teristic  quality  of  American  getting. 
The  good  American  will  indeed  tell  you  solemnly 
that  in  America  it  is  three  generations  ' '  from  shirt 
sleeves  to  shirt -sleeves";  but  this  has  about  as 
much  truth  in  it  as  that  remarkable  absence  of  any 
pure-bred  Londoners  of  the  third  generation,  dear 
to  the  British  imagination. 

Amid  the  vast  yeasty  tumult  of  American  busi 
ness,  of  the  getting  and  losing  which  are  the  main 
life  of  this  community,  nothing  could  be  clearer 
than  the  steady  accumulation  of  great  masses  of 
property  that  show  no  signs  of  disintegrating  again. 
The  very  rich  people  display  an  indisposition  to 
divide  their  estates;  the  Marshall  Field  estate  in 
Chicago,  for  example,  accumulates;  the  Jay  Gould 
inheritance  survives  great  strains.  And  when  first 
I  heard  that  "  shirt-sleeves  to  shirt-sleeves"  proverb, 
which  is  so  fortifying  a  consolation  to  the  older 

95 


THE   FUTURE    IN   AMERICA 

school  of  Americans,  my  mind  flew  back  to  the 
Thames  Embankment,  as  one  sees  it  from  the 
steamboat  on  the  river.  There,  just  eastward  of 
the  tall  red  Education  offices  of  the  London  County 
Council,  stands  a  quite  graceful  and  decorative 
little  building  of  gray  stone,  that  jars  not  at  all  with 
the  fine  traditions  of  the  adjacent  Temple,  but 
catches  the  eye,  nevertheless,  with  its  very  big,  very 
gilded  vane  in  the  form  of  a  ship.  This  is  the 
handsome  strong-box  to  which  New  York  pays  gi 
gantic  yearly  tribute,  the  office  in  which  Mr.  W.  W. 
Astor  conducts  his  affairs.  They  are  not  his  pri 
vate  and  individual  affairs,  but  the  affairs  of  the 
estate  of  the  late  J.  J.  Astor — still  undivided,  and 
still  growing  year  by  year. 

Mr.  Astor  seems  to  me  to  be  a  much  more  repre 
sentative  figure  of  American  wealth  than  any  of 
the  conspicuous  spenders  who  strike  so  vividly  upon 
the  European  imagination.  His  is  the  most  retir 
ing  of  personalities.  In  this  picturesque  stone 
casket  he  works;  his  staff  works  under  his  cog 
nizance,  and  administers,  I  know  not  to  what  ends 
nor  to  what  extent,  revenues  that  exceed  those  of 
many  sovereign  states.  He  himself  is  impressed  by 
it,  and,  without  arrogance,  he  makes  a  visit  to  his 
offices,  with  a  view  of  its  storage  vaults,  its  halls  of 
disciplined  clerks,  a  novel  and  characteristic  form 
of  entertainment.  For  the  rest,  Mr.  Astor  leads  a 
life  of  modest  affluence,  and  recreates  himself  with 
the  genealogy  of  his  family,  short  stories  about 

96   " 


SOME  ASPECTS  OF  AMERICAN   WEALTH 

treasure  lost  and  found,  and  such  like  literary 
work. 

Now  here  you  have  wealth  with,  as  it  were,  the 
minimum  of  ownership,  as  indeed  owning  its  pos 
sessor.  Nobody  seems  to  be  spending  that  huge 
income  the  crowded  enormity  of  New  York  squeezes 
out.  The  "Estate  of  the  late  J.  J.  Astor"  must 
be  accumulating  more  wealth  and  still  more;  un 
der  careful  and  systematic  management  must  be 
rolling  up  like  a  golden  snowball  under  that  gold 
en  weather-vane.  In  the  most  accidental  relation 
to  its  undistinguished,  harmless,  arithmetical  pro 
prietor  ! 

Your  anarchist  orator  or  your  crude  socialist  is 
always  talking  of  the  rich  as  blood-suckers,  rob 
bers,  robber-barons,  grafters  and  so  on.  It  really  is 
nonsense  to  talk  like  that.  In  the  presence  of  Mr. 
W.  W.  Astor  these  preposterous  accusations  answer 
themselves.  The  thing  is  a  logical  outcome  of  the 
assumptions  about  private  property  on  which  our 
contemporary  civilization  is  based,  and  Mr.  Astor, 
for  all  that  he  draws  gold  from  New  York  as  effect 
ually  as  a  ferret  draws  blood  from  a  rabbit,  is  in 
deed  the  most  innocent  of  men.  He  finds  himself  in 
a  certain  position,  and  he  sits  down  very  con 
genially  and  adds  and  adds  and  adds,  and  relieves 
the  tedium  of  his  leisure  in  literary  composition. 
Had  he  been  born  at  the  level  of  a  dry-goods  clerk 
he  would  probably  have  done  the  same  sort  of 
thing  on  a  smaller  scale,  and  it  would  have  been 

97 


THE   FUTURE   IN  AMERICA 

the  little  Poddlecombe  literary  society,  and  not  the 
Pall  Mall  Magazine,  that  would  have  been  the 
richer  for  his  compositions.  It  is  just  the  scale  of 
the  circumstances  that  differs.  . 


in 

THE  lavish  spending  of  Fifth  Avenue 
and  Paris  and  Rome  and  Mayfair  is 
but  the  flower,  the  often  brilliant,  the 
sometimes  gaudy  flower  of  the  American  economic 
process ;  and  such  slow  and  patient  accumulators  as 
Mr.  Astor  the  rounding  and  ripening  fruit.  One 
need  be  only  a  little  while  in  America  to  realize 
this,  and  to  discern  the  branch  and  leaf,  and  at  last 
even  the  aggressive  insatiable  spreading  root  of  ag 
gregating  property,  that  was  liberated  so  effectually 
when  America  declared  herself  free. 

The  group  of  people  that  attracts  the  largest 
amount  of  attention  in  press  and  talk,  that  most 
obsesses  the  American  imagination,  and  that  is  in 
deed  the  most  significant  at  the  present  time,  is  the 
little  group  —  a  few  score  men  perhaps  altogether 
—who  are  emerging  distinctly  as  winners  in  that 
great  struggle  to  get,  into  which  this  commercial  in 
dustrialism  has  naturally  resolved  itself.  Central 
among  them  are  the  men  of  the  Standard  Oil 
group,  the  "octopus"  which  spreads  its  ramifying 
tentacles  through  the  whole  system  of  American 

98 


SOME   ASPECTS   OF   AMERICAN   WEALTH 

business,  absorbing  and  absorbing,  grasping  and 
growing.  The  extraordinarily  able  investigations 
of  such  writers  as  Miss  Tarbell  and  Ray  Stannard 
Baker,  the  rhetorical  exposures  of  Mr.  T.  W.  Law- 
son,  have  brought  out  the  methods  and  quality  of 
this  group  of  persons  with  a  particularity  that  has 
been  reserved  heretofore  for  great  statesmen  and 
crowned  heads,  and  with  an  unflattering  lucidity 
altogether  unprecedented.  Not  only  is  every  hair 
on  their  heads  numbered,  but  the  number  is  pub 
lished.  They  are  known  to  their  pettiest  weak 
nesses  and  to  their  most  accidental  associations. 
And  in  this  astonishing  blaze  of  illumination  they 
continue  steadfastly  to  get. 

These  men,  who  are  creating  the  greatest  system 
of  correlated  private  properties  in  the  world,  who 
are  wealthy  beyond  all  precedent,  seem  for  the 
most  part  to  be  men  with  no  ulterior  dream  or  aim. 
They  are  not  voluptuaries,  they  are  neither  artists 
nor  any  sort  of  creators,  and  they  betray  no  high 
political  ambitions.  Had  they  anything  of  the  sort 
they  would  not  be  what,  they  are,  they  would  be 
more  than  that  and  less.  They  want  and  they  get, 
they  are  inspired  by  the  brute  will  in  their  wealth 
to  have  more  wealth  and  move,  to  a  systematic 
ardor.  They  are  men  of  a  competing,  patient, 
enterprising,  acquisitive  enthusiasm.  They  have 
found  in  America  the  perfectly  favorable  environ 
ment  for  their  temperaments.  In  no  other  country 
and  in  no  other  age  could  they  have  risen  to  such 

99 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

eminence.  America  is  still,  by  virtue  of  its  great 
Puritan  tradition  and  in  the  older  sense  of  the  word, 
an  intensely  moral  land.  Most  lusts  here  are 
strongly  curbed,  by  public  opinion,  by  training  and 
tradition.  But  the  lust  of  acquisition  has  not  been 
curbed  but  glorified.  .  .  . 

These  financial  leaders  are  accused  by  the  press 
of  every  sort  of  crime  in  the  development  of  their 
great  organizations  and  their  fight  against  com 
petitors,  but  I  feel  impelled  myself  to  acquit  them 
of  anything  so  heroic  as  a  general  scheme  of  crimi 
nality,  as  a  systematic  organization  of  power. 
They  are  men  with  a  good  deal  of  contempt  for 
legislation  and  state  interference,  but  that  is  no 
distinction,  it  has  unhappily  been  part  of  the 
training  of  the  average  American  citizen,  and  they 
have  no  doubt  exceeded  the  letter  if  not  the 
spirit  of  the  laws  of  business  competition.  They 
have  played  to  win  and  not  for  style,  and  if  they 
personally  had  not  done  so  somebody  else  would; 
they  fill  a  position  which  from  the  nature  of  things, 
somebody  is  bound  to  fill.  They  have,  no  doubt, 
carried  sharpness  to  the  very  edge  of  dishonesty, 
but  what  else  was  to  be  expected  from  the  Ameri 
can  conditions  ?  Only  by  doing  so  and  taking  risks 
is  pre-eminent  success  in  getting  to  be  attained. 
They  have  developed  an  enormous  system  of  espio 
nage,  but  on  his  smaller  scale  every  retail  grocer, 
every  employer  of  servants  does  something  in  that 
way.  They  have  secret  agents,  false  names,  con- 

100 


SOME   ASPECTS   OF   AMERICAN/ 


cealed  bargains, — what  else  could  one  expect? 
People  have  committed  suicide  through  their 
operations  —  but  in  a  game  which  is  bound  to 
bring  the  losers  to  despair  it  is  childish  to  charge 
the  winners  with  murder.  It's  the  game  that  is 
criminal.  It  is  ridiculous,  I  say,  to  write  of  these 
men  as  though  they  were  unparalleled  villains,  in 
tellectual  overmen,  conscienceless  conquerors  of  the 
world.  Mr.  J.  D.  Rockefeller's  mild,  thin  -  lipped, 
pleasant  face  gives  the  lie  to  all  such  melo 
dramatic  nonsense. 

I  must  confess  to  a  sneaking  liking  for  this  much- 
reviled  man.  One  thinks  of  Miss  Tarbell's  descrip 
tion  of  him,  displaying  his  first  boyish  account- 
book,  his  ledger  A,  to  a  sympathetic  gathering  of 
the  Baptist  young,  telling  how  he  earned  fifty  dol 
lars  in  the  first  three  months  of  his  clerking  in  a 
Chicago  warehouse,  and  how  savingly  he  dealt  with 
it.  Hear  his  words: 

"  You  could  not  get  that  book  from  me  for  all  the 
modern  ledgers  in  New  York,  nor  for  all  that  they 
would  bring.  It  almost  brings  tears  to  my  eyes 
when  I  read  over  this  little  book,  and  it  fills  me 
with  a  sense  of  gratitude  I  cannot  express.  .  .  . 

"I  know  some  people,  .  .  .  especially  some  young 
men,  find  it  difficult  to  keep  a  little  money  in  their 
pocket-book.  I  learned  to  keep  money,  and,  as  we 
have  a  way  of  saying,  it  did  not  burn  a  hole  in  my 
pocket.  I  was  taught  that  it  was  the  thing  to  keep 
the  money  and  take  care  of  it.  Among  the  early 

101 


THE  FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

experiences  that  were  helpful  to  me  that  I  recollect 
with  pleasure,  was  one  of  working  a  few  days  for 
a  neighbor  digging  potatoes — an  enterprising  and 
thrifty  farmer  who  could  dig  a  great  many  pota 
toes.  I  was  a  boy  perhaps  thirteen  or  fourteen 
years  of  age,  and  he  kept  me  busy  from  morning 
until  night.  It  was  a  ten-hour  day.  .  .  . 

"And  as  I  was  saving  these  little  sums,  I  soon 
learned  I  could  get  as  much  interest  for  fifty  dollars 
loaned  at  seven  per  cent. — the  legal  rate  in  the 
State  of  New  York  at  that  time  for  a  year — as  I 
could  earn  by  digging  potatoes  ten  days.  The  im 
pression  was  gaining  ground  with  me  that  it  was  a 
good  thing  to  let  money  be  my  slave  and  not  make 
myself  a  slave  to  money.  I  have  tried  to  remember 
that  in  every  sense." 

This  is  not  the  voice  of  any  sort  of  contemptuous 
trampler  of  his  species.  This  is  the  voice  of  an  in 
dustrious,  acquisitive,  commonplace,  pious  man,  as 
honestly  and  simply  proud  of  his  acquisitiveness  as 
a  stamp-collector  might  be.  At  times,  in  his  ac 
quisitions,  the  strength  of  his  passion  may  have 
driven  him  to  lengths  beyond  the  severe  moral  code, 
but  the  same  has  been  true  of  stamp-collectors. 
He  is  a  man  who  has  taken  up  with  great  natural 
aptitude  an  ignoble  tradition  which  links  economy 
and  earning  with  piety  and  honor.  His  teachers 
were  to  blame,  that  Baptist  community  that  is 
now  so  ashamed  of  its  son  that  it  refuses  his  gifts. 
To  a  large  extent  he  is  the  creature  of  opportunity; 

102 


SOME   ASPECTS   OF  AMERICAN   WEALTH 

he  has  been  *flung  to  the  topmost  pinnacle  of  human 
envy,  partly  by  accident,  partly  by  that  peculiarity 
of  American  conditions  that  has  subordinated,  in 
the  name  of  liberty,  all  the  grave  and  ennobling 
affairs  of  statecraft  to  a  middle-class  freedom  of 
commercial  enterprise.  Quarrel  with  that  if  you 
like.  It  is  unfair  and  ridiculous  to  quarrel  with 
him. 


CHAPTER   VII 
CERTAIN  WORKERS 


LET  us  now  look  a  little  at  another 
Th0Not^Ge°t  D°  asPect  °f  this  process  of  individualis 
tic  competition  which  is  the  economic 
process  in  America,  and  which  is  giving  us  on  its 
upper  side  the  spenders  of  Fifth  Avenue,  the  slow 
accumulators  of  the  Astor  type,  and  the  great  get 
ters  of  the  giant  business  organizations,  the  Trusts 
and  acquisitive  finance.  We  have  concluded  that 
this  process  of  free  and  open  competition  in  busi 
ness  which,  clearly,  the  framers  of  the  American 
Constitution  imagined  to  be  immortal,  does  as  a 
matter  of  fact  tend  to  kill  itself  through  the  ad 
vantage  property  gives  in  the  acquisition  of  more 
property.  But  before  we  can  go  on  to  estimate  the 
further  future  of  this  process  we  must  experiment 
with  another  question.  What  is  happening  to 
those  who  have  not  got  and  who  are  not  getting 
wealth,  who  are,  in  fact,  falling  back  in  the  com 
petition  ? 

Now  there  can  be  little  doubt  to  any  one  who 
104 


CERTAIN   WORKERS 

goes  to  and  fro  in  America  that  in  spite  of  the 
huge  accumulation  of  property  in  a  few  hands  that 
is  now  in  progress,  there  is  still  no  general  effect  of 
impoverishment.  To  me,  coming  from  London  to 
New  York,  the  effect  of  the  crowd  in  the  trolley- 
cars  and  subways  and  streets  was  one  of  exceptional 
prosperity.  New  York  has  no  doubt  its  effects  of 
noise,  disorder,  discomfort,  and  a  sort  of  brutality, 
but  to  begin  with  one  sees  nothing  of  the  underfed 
people,  the  numerous  dingily  clad  and  grayly 
housed  people  who  catch  the  eye  in  London.  Even 
in  the  congested  arteries,  the  filthy  back  streets  of 
the  East  Side  I  found  myself  saying,  as  a  thing  re 
markable,  "These  people  have  money  to  spend." 
In  London  one  travels  long  distances  for  two  cents, 
and  great  regiments  of  people  walk;  in  New  York 
the  universal  fare  is  five  cents  and  everybody  rides. 
Common  people  are  better  gloved  and  better  booted 
in  America  than  in  any  European  country  I  know, 
in  spite  of  the  higher  prices  for  clothing  here,  the 
men  wear  ready-made  suits,  it  is  true,  to  a  much 
greater  extent,  but  they  are  newer  and  brighter 
than  the  London  clerk's  carefully  brushed,  tailor- 
made  garments.  Wages  translated  from  dollars 
into  shillings  seem  enormous. 

And  there  is  no  perceptible  fall  in  wages  going 
on.  On  the  whole  wages  tend  to  rise.  For  almost 
all  sorts  of  men,  for  working  women  who  are  not 
"refined,"  there  is  a  limitless  field  of  employment. 
The  fact  that  a  growing  proportion  of  the  wealth  of 

105 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

the  community  is  passing  into  the  hands  of  a  small 
minority  of  successful  getters,  is  masked  to  super 
ficial  observation  by  the  enormous  increase  of  the 
total  wealth.  The  growth  process  overrides  the 
economic  process  and  may  continue  to  do  so  for 
many  years. 

So  that  the  great  mass  of  the  population  is  not 
consciously  defeated  in  the  economic  game.  It  is 
only  failing  to  get  a  large  share  in  the  increment 
of  wrealth.  The  European  reader  must  dismiss 
from  his  mind  any  conception  of  the  general  Ameri 
can  population  as  a  mass  of  people  undergoing  im 
poverishment  through  the  enrichment  of  the  few. 
He  must  substitute  for  that  figure  a  mass  of  people, 
very  busy,  roughly  prosperous,  generally  self-sat 
isfied,  but  ever  and  again  stirred  to  bouts  of  iras 
cibility  and  suspicion,  inundated  by  a  constantly 
swelling  flood  of  prosperity  that  pours  through  it 
and  over  it  and  passes  by  it,  without  changing  or 
enriching  it  at  all.  Ever  and  again  it  is  irritated 
by  some  rise  in  price,  an  advance  in  coal,  for  ex 
ample,  or  meat  or  rent,  that  swallows  up  some 
anticipated  gain,  but  that  is  an  entirely  different 
thing  from  want  or  distress,  from  the  fireless  hun 
gering  poverty  of  Europe. 

Nevertheless,  the  sense  of  losing  develops  and 
spreads  in  the  mass  of  the  American  people.  Priva 
tions  are  not  needed  to  create  a  sense  of  economic 
disadvantage;  thwarted  hopes  suffice.  The  speed 
and  pressure  of  work  here  is  much  greater  than  in 

106 


NEW    YORK'S    CROWDED,    LITTERED    EAST    SIDE 


CERTAIN   WORKERS 

Europe,  the  impatience  for  realization  intenser. 
The  average  American  comes  into  life  prepared  to 
"get  on,"  and  ready  to  subordinate  most  things  in 
life  to  that.  He  encounters  a  rising  standard  of 
living.  He  finds  it  more  difficult  to  get  on  than 
his  father  did  before  him.  He  is  perplexed  and 
irritated  by  the  spectacle  of  lavish  spending  and 
the  report  of  gigantic  accumulations  that  outshine 
his  utmost  possibilities  of  enjoyment  or  success. 
He  is  a  busy  and  industrious  man,  greatly  preoccu 
pied  by  the  struggle,  but  when  he  stops  to  think 
and  talk  at  all,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  his 
outlook  is  a  disillusioned  one,  more  and  more 
tinged  with  a  deepening  discontent. 


ii 

BUT  the  state  of  mind  of  the  average 
American  we  have  to  consider  later. 
That  is  the  central  problem  of  this 
horoscope  we  contemplate.  Before  we  come  to 
that  we  have  to  sketch  out  all  the  broad  aspects  of 
the  situation  with  which  that  mind  has  to  deal. 

Now  in  the  preceding  chapter  I  tried  to  convey 
my  impression  of  the  spending  and  wealth-getting 
of  this  vast  community ;  I  tried  to  convey  how  irre 
sponsible  it  was,  how  unpremeditated.  The  Amer 
ican  rich  have,  as  it  were,  floated  up  out  of  a 
confused  struggle  of  equal  individuals.  That  indi- 

107 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

vidualistic  commercial  struggle  has  not  only  flung 
up  these  rich  to  their  own  and  the  world's  amaze 
ment,  it  is  also,  with  an  equal  blindness,  crushing 
and  maiming  great  multitudes  of  souls.  But  this  is 
a  fact  that  does  not  smite  upon  one's  attention 
at  the  outset.  The  English  visitor  to  the  great 
towns  sees  the  spending,  sees  the  general  prosperity, 
the  universal  air  of  confident  pride ;  he  must  go  out 
of  his  way  to  find  the  under  side  to  these  things. 

One  little  thing  set  me  questioning.  I  had  been 
one  Sunday  night  down- town,  supping  and  talking 
with  Mr.  Abraham  Cahan  about  the  "  East  Side,"  that 
strange  city  within  a  city  which  has  a  drama  of  its 
own  and  a  literature  and  a  press,  and  about  Russia 
and  her  problem,  and  I  was  returning  on  the  sub 
way  about  two  o'clock  in  the  morning.  I  became 
aware  of  a  little  lad  sitting  opposite  me,  a  childish- 
faced  delicate  little  creature  of  eleven  years  old  or 
so,  wearing  the  uniform  of  a  messenger-boy.  He 
drooped  with  fatigue,  roused  himself  with  a  start, 
edged  off  his  seat  with  a  sigh,  stepped  off  the  car, 
and  was  vanishing  up-stairs  into  the  electric  glare 
of  Astor  Place  as  the  train  ran  out  of  the  station. 

"What  on  earth,"  said  I,  "is  that  baby  doing 
abroad  at  this  time  of  night?" 

For  me  this  weary  little  wretch  became  the  irri 
tant  centre  of  a  painful  region  of  inquiry.  "How 
many  hours  a  day  may  a  child  work  in  New  York," 
I  began  to  ask  people,  "and  when  may  a  boy 
leave  school?" 

108 


CERTAIN   WORKERS 

I  had  blundered,  I  found,  upon  the  weakest  spot 
in  America's  fine  front  of  national  well-being.  My 
eyes  were  opened  to  the  childish  newsboys  who  sold 
me  papers,  and  the  little  bootblacks  at  the  street 
corners.  Nocturnal  child  employment  is  a  social 
abomination.  I  gathered  stories  of  juvenile  vice, 
of  lads  of  nine  and  ten  suffering  from  terrible  dis 
eases,  of  the  contingent  sent  by  these  messengers  to 
the  hospitals  and  jails.  I  began  to  realize  another 
aspect  of  that  great  theory  of  the  liberty  of  prop 
erty  and  the  subordination  of  the  state  to  business, 
upon  which  American  institutions  are  based.  That 
theory  has  no  regard  for  children.  Indeed,  it  is  a  the 
ory  that  disregards  wromen  and  children,  the  cardinal 
facts  of  life  altogether.  They  are  private  things.  .  .  . 

It  is  curious  how  little  we,  who  live  in  the  dawn 
ing  light  of  a  new  time,  question  the  intellectual 
assumptions  of  the  social  order  about  us.  We  find 
ourselves  in  a  life  of  huge  confusions  and  many 
cruelties,  we  plan  this  and  that  to  remedy  and  im 
prove,  but  very  few  of  us  go  down  to  the  ideas  that 
begot  these  ugly  conditions,  the  laws,  the  usages 
and  liberties  that  are  nowT  in  their  detailed  ex 
pansion  so  perplexing,  intricate,  and  overwhelm 
ing.  Yet  the  life  of  man  is  altogether  made  up  of 
will  cast  into  the  mould  of  ideas,  and  only  by  cor 
recting  ideas,  changing  ideas  and  replacing  ideas 
are  any  ameliorations  and  advances  to  be  achieved 
in  human  destiny.  All  other  things  are  subordi 
nate  to  that. 

109 


THE    FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

Now  the  theory  of  liberty  upon  which  the  liberal 
ism  of  Great  Britain,  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States,  and  the  bourgeois  Republic  of  France  rests, 
assumes  that  all  men  are  free  and  equal.  They  are 
all  tacitly  supposed  to  be  adult  and  immortal,  they 
are  sovereign  over  their  property  and  over  their 
wives  and  children,  and  everything  is  framed  with 
a  view  to  insuring  them  security  in  the  enjoyment 
of  their  rights.  No  doubt  this  was  a  better  theory 
than  that  of  the  divine  right  of  kings,  against 
which  it  did  triumphant  battle,  but  it  does,  as  one 
sees  it  to-day,  fall  most  extraordinarily  short  of  the 
truth,  and  only  a  few  logical  fanatics  have  ever 
tried  to  carry  it  out  to  its  complete  consequences. 
For  example,  it  ignored  the  facts  that  more  than 
half  of  the  adult  people  in  a  country  are  women, 
and  that  all  the  men  and  women  of  a  country 
taken  together  are  hardly  as  numerous  and  far  less 
important  to  the  welfare  of  that  country  than  the 
individuals  under  age.  It  regarded  living  as  just 
living,  a  stupid  dead  level  of  egotistical  effort  and 
enjoyment;  it  was  blind  to  the  fact  that  living  is 
part  growing,  part  learning,  part  dying  to  make 
way  and  altogether  service  and  sacrifice.  It  as 
serted  that  the  care  and  education  of  children,  and 
business  bargains  affecting  the  employment  and 
welfare  of  women  and  children,  are  private  affairs. 
It  resisted  the  compulsory  education  of  children 
and  factory  legislation,  therefore,  with  extraordi 
nary  persistence  and  bitterness.  The  common- 


CERTAIN   WORKERS 

sense  of  the  three  great  progressive  nations  con 
cerned  has  been  stronger  than  their  theory,  but  to 
this  day  enormous  social  evils  are  to  be  traced  to 
that  passionate  jealousy  of  state  intervention  be 
tween  a  man  and  his  wife,  his  children,  and  other 
property,  which  is  the  distinctive  unprecedented 
feature  of  the  originally  middle-class  modern  or 
ganization  of  society  upon  commercial  and  in 
dustrial  conceptions  in  which  we  are  all  (and 
America  most  deeply)  living. 

.1  began  with  a  drowsy  little  messenger-boy  in  the 
New  York  Subway.  Before  I  had  done  with  the 
question  I  had  come  upon  amazing  things.  Just 
think  of  it!  This  richest,  greatest  country  the 
world  has  ever  seen  has  over  1,700,000  children  un 
der  fifteen  years  of  age  toiling  in  fields,  factories, 
mines,  and  workshops.  And  Robert  Hunter — whose 
Poverty,  if  I  were  autocrat,  should  be  compulsory 
reading  for  every  prosperous  adult  in  the  United 
States,  tells  me  of  "not  less  than  eighty  thousand 
children,  most  of  whom  are  little  girls,  at  present 
employed  in  the  textile  mills  of  this  country.  In 
the  South  there  are  now  six  times  as  many  children 
at  work  as  there  were  twenty  years  ago.  Child 
labor  is  increasing  yearly  in  that  section  of  the 
country.  Each  year  more  little  ones  are  brought 
in  from  the  fields  and  hills  to  live  in  the  degrading 
atmosphere  of  the  mill  towns."  .  .  . 

Children  are  deliberately  imported  by  the  Ital 
ians.  I  gathered  from  Commissioner  Watchorn  at 


THE   FUTURE    IN   AMERICA 

Ellis  Island  that  the  proportion  of  little  nephews 
and  nieces,  friends'  sons,  and  so  forth,  brought  in 
by  them  is  peculiarly  high,  and  I  heard  him  try 
and  condemn  a  doubtful  case.  It  was  a  particu 
larly  unattractive  Italian  in  charge  of  a  dull-eyed 
little  boy  of  no  ascertainable  relationship.  .  .  . 

In  the  worst  days  of  cotton-milling  in  England 
the  conditions  were  hardly  worse  than  those  now 
existing  in  the  South.  Children,  the  tiniest  and 
frailest,  of  five  and  six  years  of  age,  rise  in  the 
morning  and,  like  old  men  and  women,  go  to  the 
mills  to  do  their  day's  labor;  and  when  they  return 
home,  "wearily  fling  themselves  on  their  beds,  too 
tired  to  take  off  their  clothes."  Many  children 
work  all  night — "in  the  maddening  racket  of  the 
machinery,  in  an  atmosphere  unsanitary  and  cloud 
ed  with  humidity  and  lint." 

"  It  will  be  long,"  adds  Mr.  Hunter,  in  his  descrip 
tion,  "before  I  forget  the  face  of  a  little  boy  of  six 
years,  with  his  hands  stretched  forward  to  rearrange 
a  bit  of  machinery,  his  pallid  face  and  spare  form 
already  showing  the  physical  effects  of  labor.  This 
child,  six  years  of  age,  was  working  twelve  hours  a 
day." 

From  Mr.  Spargo's  Bitter  Cry  of  the  Children  I 
learn  this  much  of  the  joys  of  certain  among  the 
youth  of  Pennsylvania: 

"For  ten  or  eleven  hours  a  day  children  of  ten  and 
eleven  stoop  over  the  chute  and  pick  out  the  slate  and 
other  impurities  from  the  coal  as  it  moves  past  them. 

112 


BREAKER    BOYS    AT    A     PENNSYLVANIA     COLLIERY 


CERTAIN   WORKERS 

The  air  is  black  with  coal-dust,  and  the  roar  of  the  crushers, 
screens,  and  rushing  mill-race  of  coal  is  deafening.  Some 
times  one  of  the  children  falls  into  the  machinery  and  is 
terribly  mangled,  or  slips  into  the  chute  and  is  smothered 
to  death.  Many  children  are  killed  in  this  way.  Many 
others,  after  a  time,  contract  coal  -  miners'  asthma  and 
consumption,  which  gradually  undermine  their  health. 
Breathing  continually  day  after  day  the  clouds  of  coal- 
dust,  their  lungs  become  black  and  choked  with  small 
particles  of  anthracite."  .  .  . 

In  Massachusetts,  at  Fall  River,  the  Hon.  J.  F. 
Carey  tells  us  how  little  naked  boys,  free  Ameri 
cans,  work  for  Mr.  Borden,  the  New  York  million 
aire,  packing  cloth  into  bleaching  vats  in  a  bath  of 
chemicals  that  bleaches  their  little  bodies  like  the 
bodies  of  lepers.  .  .  . 

Well,  we  English  have  no  right  to  condemn  the 
Americans  for  these  things.  The  history  of  our 
own  industrial  development  is  black  with  the  blood 
of  tortured  and  murdered  children.  America  still 
has  the  factory  serfs.  New  Jersey  sends  her 
pauper  children  south  to-day  into  worse  than 
slavery,  but,  as  Cottle  tells  in  his  reminiscences  of 
Southey  and  Coleridge,  that  is  precisely  the  same 
wretched  export  Bristol  packed  off  to  feed  the  mills 
of  Manchester  in  late  Georgian  times.  We  got 
ahead  with  factory  legislation  by  no  peculiar  virtue 
in  our  statecraft,  it  was  just  the  revenge  the  land- 
lords  took  upon  the  manufacturers  for  reform  and 
free  trade  in  corn  and  food.  In  America  the  manu 
facturers  have  had  things  to  themselves. 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

And  America  has  difficulties  to  encounter  of 
which  we  know  nothing.  In  the  matter  of  labor 
legislation  each  State  legislature  is  supreme;  in 
each  separate  State  the  forces  of  light  and  progress 
must  fight  the  battle  of  the  children  and  the  future 
over  again  against  interests,  lies,  prejudice  and 
stupidity.  Each  State  pleads  the  bad  example  of 
another  State,  and  there  is  always  the  threat  that 
capital  will  withdraw.  No  national  minimum  is 
possible  under  existing  conditions.  And  when  the 
laws  have  passed  there  is  still  the  universal  con 
tempt  for  State  control  to  reckon  with,  the  impos 
sibilities  of  enforcement.  Illinois,  for  instance, 
scandalized  at  the  spectacle  of  children  in  those 
filthy  stock-yards,  ankle-deep  in  blood,  cleaning  in 
testines  and  trimming  meat,  recently  passed  a 
child-labor  law  that  raised  the  minimum  age  for 
such  employment  to  sixteen,  but  evasion,  they  told 
me  in  Chicago,  was  simple  and  easy.  New  York, 
too,  can  show  by  its  statute-books  that  my  drowsy 
nocturnal  messenger  -  boy  was  illegal  and  impos 
sible.  .  .  . 

This  is  the  bottomest  end  of  the  scale  that  at  the 
top  has  all  the  lavish  spending  of  Fifth  Avenue,  the 
joyous  wanton  giving  of  Mr.  Andrew  Carnegie. 
Equally  with  these  things  it  is  an  unpremeditated 
consequence  of  an  inadequate  theory  of  freedom. 
The  foolish  extravagances  of  the  rich,  the  archi 
tectural  pathos  of  Newport,  the  dingy,  noisy,  eco 
nomic  jumble  of  central  and  south  Chicago,  the 

114 


CERTAIN    WORKERS 

Standard  Oil  offices  in  Broadway,  the  darkened 
streets  beneath  New  York's  elevated  railroad,  the 
littered  ugliness  of  Niagara's  banks,  and  the  lower 
most  hell  of  child  suffering  are  all  so  many  ac 
cordant  aspects  and  inexorable  consequences  of  the 
same  undisciplined  way  of  living.  Let  each  man 
push  for  himself — it  comes  to  these  things.  .  .  . 

So  far  as  our  purpose  of  casting  a  horoscope  goes 
we  have  particularly  to  note  this  as  affecting  the 
future;  these  working  children  cannot  be  learning 
to  read — though  they  will  presently  be  having  votes 
—they  cannot  grow  up  fit  to  bear  arms,  to  be  in 
any  sense  but  a  vile  computing  sweater's  sense, 
men.  So  miserably  they  will  avenge  themselves  by 
supplying  the  stuff  for  vice,  for  crime,  for  yet  more 
criminal  and  political  manipulations.  One  million 
seven  hundred  children,  practically  uneducated,  are 
toiling  over  here,  and  growing  up,  darkened,  marred, 
and  dangerous,  into  the  American  future  I  am  seek 
ing  to  forecast. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
CORRUPTION 


So,  it  seems  to  me,  in  this  new  crude 
continental  commonwealth,  there  is  go 
ing  on  the  same  economic  process,  on  a 
grander  scale,  indeed,  than  has  gone  so  far  in  our 
own  island.  There  is  a  great  concentration  of 
wealth  above,  and  below,  deep  and  growing  is  the 
abyss,  that  sunken  multitude  on  the  margin  of 
subsistence  which  is  a  characteristic  and  necessary 
feature  of  competitive  industrialism,  that  teeming 
abyss  where  children  have  no  chance,  where  men  and 
women  dream  neither  of  leisure  nor  of  self-respect. 
And  between  this  efflorescence  of  wealth  above  and 
spreading  degradation  below,  comes  the  great  mass 
of  the  population,  perhaps  fifty  millions  and  more 
of  healthy  and  active  men,  women  and  children  (I 
leave  out  of  count  altogether  the  colored  people  and 
the  special  trouble  of  the  South  until  a  later  chapter) 
who  are  neither  irresponsibly  free  nor  hopelessly 
bound,  who  are  the  living  determining  substance  of 
America. 

116 


CORRUPTION 

Collectively  they  constitute  what  Mr.  Roosevelt 
calls  the  "Nation,"  what  an  older  school  of  Ameri 
cans  used  to  write  of  as  the  People.  The  Nation  is 
neither  rich  nor  poor,  neither  capitalist  nor  laborer, 
neither  Republican  nor  Democrat;  it  is  a  great 
diversified  multitude  including  all  these  things.  It 
is  a  comprehensive  abstraction;  it  is  the  ultimate 
reality.  You  may  seek  for  it  in  America  and  you 
cannot  find  it,  as  one  seeks  in  vain  for  the  forest 
among  the  trees.  It  has  no  clear  voice;  the  con 
fused  and  local  utterances  of  a  dispersed  innumer 
able  press,  of  thousands  of  public  speakers,  of 
books  and  preachers,  evoke  fragmentary  responses 
or  drop  rejected  into  oblivion.  I  have  been  told  by 
countless  people  where  I  shall  find  the  typical 
American;  one  says  in  Maine,  one  in  the  Alle- 
ghenies,  one  "farther  west,"  one  in  Kansas,  one  in 
Cleveland.  He  is  indeed  nowhere  and  everywhere. 
He  is  an  English-speaking  person,  with  extraordi 
narily  English  traits  still,  in  spite  of  much  good 
German  and  Scandinavian  and  Irish  blood  he  has 
assimilated.  He  has  a  distrust  of  lucid  theories, 
and  logic,  and  he  talks  unwillingly  of  ideas.  He  is 
preoccupied,  he  is  busy  with  his  individual  affairs, 
but  he  is — I  can  feel  it  in  the  air — thinking. 

How  widely  and  practically  he  is  thinking  that 
curious  product  of  the  last  few  years,  the  ten-cent 
magazine,  will  show.  In  England  our  sixpenny 
magazines  seem  all  written  for  boys  and  careless 
people;  they  are  nothing  but  stories  and  jests  and 

117 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

pictures.  The  weekly  ones  achieve  an  extraordi 
narily  agreeable  emptiness.  Their  American  equiva 
lents  are  full  of  the  studied  and  remarkably  well- 
written  discussion  of  grave  public  questions.  I 
pick  up  one  magazine  and  find  a  masterly  exposi 
tion  of  the  public  aspect  of  railway  rebates,  another 
and  a  trust  is  analyzed.  Then  here  are  some  titles 
of  books  that  all  across  this  continent  are  being 
multitudinously  read:  Parson's  Heart  of  the  Railway 
Problem,  Steffens's  Shame  of  the  Cities,  Lawson's 
Frenzied  Finance,  Miss  Tarbell's  Story  of  Standard 
Oil,  Abbott's  Industrial  Problem,  Spargo's  Bitter 
Cry  of  the  Children,  Hunter's  Poverty,  and,  pioneer 
of  them  all,  Lloyd's  Wealth  Against  Commonwealth. 
These  are  titles  quoted  almost  at  hap-hazard. 
Within  a  remarkably  brief  space  of  time  the  Ameri 
can  nation  has  turned  away  from  all  the  heady 
self-satisfaction  of  the  nineteenth  century  and  com 
menced  a  process  of  heart  searching  quite  unpar 
alleled  in  history.  Its  egotistical  interest  in  its 
own  past  is  over  and  done.  While  Mr.  Upton  Sin 
clair,  the  youngest,  most  distinctive  of  recent 
American  novelists,  achieved  but  a  secondary  suc 
cess  with  his  admirably  conceived  romance  of  the 
Civil  War,  Manassas,  The  Jungle,  his  book  about 
the  beef  trust  and  the  soul  of  the  immigrant,  the 
most  unflattering  picture  of  America  that  any  one 
has  yet  dared  to  draw,  has  fired  the  country. 

The  American  nation,   which   a  few  years  ago 
seemed  invincibly  wedded  to  an  extreme  individu- 

118 


CORRUPTION 

alism,  seemed  resolved,  as  it  were,  to  sit  on  the 
safety  valves  of  the  economic  process  and  go  on  to 
the  ultimate  catastrophe,  displays  itself  now  alert 
and  questioning.  It  has  roused  itself  to  a  grave 
and  extensive  consideration  of  the  intricate  eco 
nomic  and  political  problems  that  close  like  a  net 
about  its  future.  The  essential  question  for  Amer 
ica,  as  for  Europe,  is  the  rescue  of  her  land,  her 
public  service,  and  the  whole  of  her  great  eco 
nomic  process  from  the  anarchic  and  irresponsi 
ble  control  of  private  owners — how  dangerous  and 
horrible  that  control  may  become  the  Railway  and 
Beef  Trust  investigations  have  shown — and  the  or 
ganization  of  her  social  life  upon  the  broad,  clean, 
humane  conceptions  of  modern  science.  In  every 
country,  however,  this  huge  problem  of  reconstruc 
tion  which  is  the  alternative  to  a  plutocratic  de 
cadence,  is  enormously  complicated  by  irrelevant 
and  special  difficulties.  In  Great  Britain,  for  ex 
ample,  the  ever-pressing  problem  of  holding  the 
empire,  and  the  fact  that  one  legislative  body  is 
composed  almost  entirely  of  private  land-owners, 
hampers  every  step  towards  a  better  order.  Upon 
every  country  in  Europe  weighs  the  armor  of  war. 
In  America  the  complications  are  distinctive  and 
peculiar.  She  is  free,  indeed,  now  to  a  large  ex 
tent  from  the  possibility  of  any  grave  military 
stresses,  her  one  overseas  investment  in  the  Philip 
pines  she  is  evidently  resolved  to  forget  and  be  rid 
of  at  as  early  a  date  as  possible.  But,  on  the  other 

9  119 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

hand,  she  is  confronted  by  a  system  of  legal  en 
tanglements  of  extraordinary  difficulty  and  per 
plexity,  she  has  the  most  powerful  tradition  of  in 
dividualism  in  the  world,  and  a  degraded  political 
system,  and  she  has  in  the  presence  of  a  vast  and 
increasing  proportion  of  unassimilable  aliens  in  her 
substance — negroes,  south  European  peasants,  Rus 
sian  Jews  and  the  like — an  ever-intensifying  com 
plication. 


II 

Now  what  is  called  corruption  in 
Graft  America  is  a  thing  not  confined  to 
politics;  it  is  a  defect  of  moral  method 
found  in  every  department  of  American  life.  I 
find  in  big  print  in  every  paper  I  open,  "GRAFT." 
All  through  my  journey  in  America  I  have  been 
trying  to  gauge  the  quality  of  this  corruption,  I 
have  been  talking  to  all  kinds  of  people  about  it,  I 
have  had  long  conversations  about  it  with  President 
Eliot  of  Harvard,  with  District  -  Attorney  Jerome, 
with  one  leading  insurance  president,  with  a  num 
ber  of  the  City  Club  people  in  Chicago,  with  several 
East  -  Siders  in  New  York,  with  men  engaged  in 
public  work  in  every  city  I  have  visited,  with 
Senators  at  Washington,  with  a  Chicago  saloon 
keeper  and  his  friend,  a  shepherd  of  votes,  and  with 
a  varied  and  casual  assortment  of  Americans  upon 

120 


CORRUPTION 

trains  and  boats;  I  read  my  Ostrogorsky,  my 
Otiinsterberg,  and  my  Roosevelt  before  I  came  to 
America,  and  I  find  myself  going  through  any 
American  newspaper  that  comes  to  hand  always 
with  an  eye  to  this.  It  is  to  me  a  most  vital  issue 
in  the  horoscope  I  contemplate.  All  depends  upon 
the  answer  to  this  question:  Is  the  average  citizen 
fundamentally  dishonest  ?  Is  he  a  rascal  and  hum 
bug  in  grain?  If  he  is,  the  future  can  needs  be  no 
more  than  a  monstrous  social  disorganization  in 
the  face  of  divine  opportunities.  Or  is  he  funda 
mentally  honest,  but  a  little  confused  ethically  ? .  .  . 

The  latter,  I  think,  is  the  truer  alternative,  but  I 
will  confess  I  have  ranged  through  all  the  scale  be 
tween  a  buoyant  optimism  and  despair.  It  is  ex 
traordinarily  difficult  to  move  among  the  crowded 
contrasts  of  this  perplexing  country  and  emerge 
with  any  satisfactory  generalization.  But  there  is 
one  word  I  find  all  too  frequently  in  the  American 
papers,  and  that  is  "stealing."  They  come  near 
calling  any  profitable,  rather  unfair  bargain  with 
the  public »a  "steal."  It's  the  common  journalistic 
vice  here  always  to  overstate.  Every  land  has  its 
criminals,  no  doubt,  but  the  American,  I  am  con 
vinced,  is  the  last  man  in  the  world  to  steal.  Nor 
does  he  tell  you  lies  to  your  face,  except  in  the  way 
of  business.  He's  not  that  sort  of  man.  Nor  does 
he  sneak  bad  money  into  your  confiding  hand. 
Nor  ask  a  higher  price  than  he  means  to  accept. 
Nor  cheat  on  exchange.  For  all  the  frequency  of 

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THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

"graft"  and  "stealing"  in  the  press  head-lines,  I 
feel  the  American  is  pretty  distinctly  less  "mean" 
than  many  Europeans  in  these  respects,  and  much 
more  disposed  to  be  ashamed  of  meanness. 

But  he  certainly  has  an  ethical  system  of  a 
highly  commercial  type.  If  he  isn't  dishonest  he's 
commercialized.  He  lives  to  get,  to  come  out  of 
every  transaction  with  more  than  he  gave. 

In  the  highly  imaginative  theory  that  underlies 
the  realities  of  an  individualistic  society  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  honest  trading.  In  practice  I 
don't  believe  there  is.  Exchangeable  things  are 
supposed  to  have  a  fixed  quality  called  their  value, 
and  honest  trading  is,  I  am  told,  the  exchange  of 
things  of  equal  value.  Nobody  gains  or  loses  by 
honest  trading,  and  therefore  nobody  can  grow  rich 
by  it.  And  nobody  would  do  business  except  to 
subsist  by  a  profit  and  attempt  to  grow  rich.  The 
honest  merchant  in  the  individualist's  dream  is  a 
worthy  and  urbane  person  who  intervenes  between 
the  seller  here  and  the  buyer  there,  fetches  from 
one  to  another,  stores  a  surplus  of  goods,  takes 
risks,  and  indemnifies  himself  by  charging  the 
seller  and  the  buyer  a  small  fee  for  his  waiting  and 
his  carrying  and  his  speculative  hawking  about. 
He  would  be  sick  and  ashamed  to  undervalue  a 
purchase  or  overcharge  a  customer,  and  it  scarcely 
requires  a  competitor  to  reduce  his  fee  to  a  mini 
mum.  He  draws  a  line  between  customers  with 
whom  he  deals  and  competitors  with  whom  he 

122 


CORRUPTION 

wouldn't  dream  of  dealing.  And  though  it  seems  a 
little  incredible,  he  grows  rich  and  beautiful  in 
these  practices  and  endows  Art,  Science,  and  Litera 
ture.  Such  is  the  commercial  life  in  a  world  of 
economic  angels,  magic  justice  and  the  Individual 
ist's  Utopia.  In  reality  flesh  and  blood  cannot  re 
sist  a  bargain,  and  people  trade  to  get.  In  reality 
value  is  a  dream,  and  the  commercial  ideal  is  to 
buy  from  the  needy,  sell  to  the  urgent  need,  and 
get  all  that  can  possibly  be  got  out  of  every  trans 
action.  To  do  anything  else  isn't  business  —  it's 
some  other  sort  of  game.  Let  us  look  squarely  into 
the  pretences  of  trading.  The  plain  fact  of  the 
case  is  that  in  trading  for  profit  there  is  no  natural 
line  at  which  legitimate  bargaining  ends  and  cheat 
ing  begins.  The  seller  wants  to  get  above  the 
value  and  the  buyer  below  it.  The  seller  seeks  to  ' 
appreciate,  the  buyer  to  depreciate;  and  where  is 
there  room  for  truth  in  that  contest?  In  bargain 
ing,  overvaluing  and  undervaluing  are  not  only 
permissible  but  inevitable,  attempts  to  increase  the 
desire  to  buy  and  willingness  to  sell.  Who  can  in 
vent  a  rule  to  determine  what  expedients  are  per 
missible  and  what  not?  You  may  draw  an  arbi 
trary  boundary — the  law  does  here  and  there,  a 
little  discontinuously  —  but  that  is  all.  For  ex 
ample,  consider  these  questions  that  follow:  Noth 
ing  is  perfect  in  this  world;  all  goods  are  defective. 
Are  you  bound  to  inform  your  customer  of  every 
defect?  Suppose  you  are,  then  are  you  bound  to 

123 


THE   FUTURE    IN   AMERICA 

examine  your  goods  minutely  for  defects?  Grant 
that.  Then  if  you  intrust  that  duty  to  an  em 
ployee  ought  you  to  dismiss  him  for  selling  defective 
goods  for  you  ?  The  customer  will  buy  your  goods 
anyhow.  Are  you  bound  to  spend  more  upon  clean 
ing  and  packing  them  than  he  demands? — to  wrap 
them  in  gold-foil  gratuitously,  for  example?  How 
are  you  going  to  answer  these  questions?  Let  me 
suppose  that  your  one  dream  in  life  is  to  grow  rich. 
Suppose  you  want  to  grow  very  rich  and  found  a 
noble  university,  let  us  say? 

You  answer  them  in  the  Roman  spirit,  with 
caveat  emptor.  Then  can  you  decently  join  in  the 
outcry  against  the  Chicago  butchers? 

Then  turn  again  to  the  group  of  problems  the 
Standard  Oil  history  raises.  You  want  the  cus 
tomer  to  buy  your  goods  and  not  your  competitor's. 
Naturally  you  do  everything  to  get  your  goods  to 
him,  to  make  them  seem  best  to  him,  to  reduce  the 
influx  of  the  other  man's  stuff.  You  don't  lend 
your  competitor  your  shop -window  anyhow.  If 
there's  a  hoarding  you  don't  restrict  your  adver 
tisements  because  otherwise  there  won't  be  room 
for  him.  And  if  you  happen  to  have  a  paramount 
interest  in  the  carrying  line  that  bears  your  goods 
and  his,  why  shouldn't  you  see  that  your  own  goods 
arrive  first?  And  at  a  cheaper  rate?  .  .  . 

You  see  one  has  to  admit  there  is  always  this 
element  of  overreaching,  of  outwitting,  of  fore 
stalling,  in  all  systematic  trade.  It  may  be  refined, 

124 


INTERIOR    OF    A    NEW    YORK    OFFICE    BUILDING 


CORRUPTION 

it  may  be  dignified,  but  it  is  there.  It  differs  in 
degree  and  not  in  quality  from  cheating.  A  very 
scrupulous  man  stops  at  one  point,  a  less  scrupu 
lous  man  at  another,  an  eager,  ambitious  man  may 
find  himself  carried  by  his  own  impetus  very  far. 
Too  often  the  least  scrupulous  wins.  In  all  ages, 
among  all  races,  this  taint  in  trade  has  been  felt. 
Modern  western  Europe,  led  by  England,  and 
America  have  denied  it  stoutly,  have  glorified  the 
trader,  called  him  a  "merchant  prince,"  wrapped 
him  in  the  purple  of  the  word  "financier,"  bowed 
down  before  him.  The  trader  remains  a  trader,  a 
hand  that  clutches,  an  uncreative  brain  that  lays 
snares.  Occasionally,  no  doubt,  he  exceeds  his 
function  and  is  better  than  his  occupations.  But 
it  is  not  he  but  the  maker  who  must  be  the  power 
and  ruler  of  the  great  and  luminous  social  order 
that  must  surely  come,  that  new  order  I  have  per 
suaded  myself  I  find  in  glimmering  evasive  promises 
amid  the  congestions  of  New  York,  the  sheds  and 
defilements  of  Niagara,  and  the  Chicago  reek  and 
grime.  .  .  .  The  American,  I  feel  assured,  can  be  a 
bold  and  splendid  maker.  He  is  not,  like  the  un 
creative  Parsee  or  Jew  or  Armenian,  a  trader  by 
blood  and  nature.  The  architecture  I  have  seen, 
the  finely  planned,  internally  beautiful,  and  ad 
mirably  organized  office  buildings  (to  step  into 
them  from  the  street  is  to  step  up  fifty  years  in  the 
scale  of  civilization),  the  business  organizations,  the 
industrial  skill — I  visited  a  trap  and  chain  factory 

125 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

at  Oneida,  right  in  the  heart  of  New  York  State, 
that  was  like  the  interior  of  a  well-made  clock — 
above  all,  the  plans  for  reconstructing  his  cities 
show  that.  Those  others  make  nothing.  But 
nevertheless,  since  he,  more  than  any  man,  has  sub 
served  the  full  development  of  eighteenth  and 
nineteenth  century  conceptions,  he  has  acquired 
some  of  the  very  worst  habits  of  the  trader.  Too 
often  he  is  a  gambler.  Ever  and  again  I  have  had 
glimpses  of  preoccupied  groups  of  men  at  green 
tables  in  little  rooms,  playing  that  dreary  game 
poker,  wherein  there  is  no  skill,  no  variety  except 
in  the  sum  at  hazard,  no  orderly  development,  only 
a  sort  of  expressionless  lying  called  "bluffing."  In 
deed,  poker  isn't  so  much  a  game  as  a  bad  habit. 
Yet  the  American  sits  for  long  hours  at  it,  dispers 
ing  and  accumulating  dollars,  and  he  carries  its 
great  conception  of  " bluff"  and  a  certain  experi 
ence  of  kinetic  physiognomy  back  with  him  to  his 
office.  .  .  . 

And  Americans  talk  dollars  to  an  astonishing 
extent.  .  .  . 

Now  this  is  the  reality  of  American  corruption,  a 
huge  exclusive  preoccupation  with  dollar  -  getting. 
What  is  called  corruption  by  the  press  is  really  no 
more  than  the  acute  expression  in  individual  cases 
of  this  general  fault. 

Where  everybody  is  getting  it  is  idle  to  expect  a 
romantic  standard  of  honesty  between  employers 
and  employed.  The  official  who  buys  rails  for  the 

126 


CORRUPTION 

big  railway  company  that  is  professedly  squeezing 
every  penny  it  can  out  of  the  public  for  its  share 
holders  as  its  highest  aim,  is  not  likely  to  display 
any  religious  self-abnegation  of  a  share  for  himself 
in  this  great  work.  The  director  finds  it  hard  to 
distinguish  between  getting  for  himself  and  getting 
for  his  company,  and  the  duty  to  one- self  of  a  dis 
creet  use  of  opportunity  taints  the  whole  staff 
from  manager  to  messenger-boy.  The  politicians 
wrho  protect  the  interests  of  the  same  railway  in 
the  House  of  Commons  or  the  Senate,  as  the  case 
may  be,  are  not  going  to  do  it  for  love  either.  No 
body  will  have  any  mercy  for  their  wives  or  children 
if  they  die  poor.  The  policeman  who  stands  be 
tween  the  property  of  the  company  and  the  irregu 
lar  enterprise  of  robbers  feels  his  vigilance  merits  a 
special  recognition.  A  position  of  trust  is  a  posi 
tion  of  advantage,  and  deserves  a  percentage. 
Everywhere,  as  every  one  knows,  in  all  the  modern 
States,  quite  as  much  as  in  China,  there  are  com 
missions,  there  are  tips,  there  are  extortions  and 
secret  profits,  there  is,  in  a  word,  " graft."  It's  no 
American  specialty.  Things  are  very  much  the 
same  in  this  matter  in  Great  Britain  as  in  America, 
but  Americans  talk  more  and  louder  than  we  do. 
And  indeed  all  this  is  no  more  than  an  inevitable 
development  of  the  idea  of  trading  in  the  mind, 
that  every  transaction  must  leave  something  be 
hind  for  the  agent.  It's  not  stealing,  but  never 
theless,  the  automatic  cash-register  becomes  more 

127 


THE   FUTURE    IN   AMERICA 

and  more  of  a  necessity  in  this  thickening  atmos 
phere  of  private  enterprise. 


in 

IT  seems  to  me  that  the  political 
corruption  that  still  plays  so  large  a 
part  in  the  American  problem  is  a 
natural  and  necessary  underside  to  a  purely  middle- 
class  organization  of  society  for  business.  Nobody 
is  left  over  to  watch  the  politician.  And  the  evil  is 
enormously  aggravated  by  the  complexities  of  the 
political  machinery,  by  the  methods  of  the  presi 
dential  election  that  practically  prescribes  a  ticket 
method  of  voting,  and  by  the  absence  of  any  second 
ballots.  Moreover,  the  passion  of  the  simpler 
minded  Americans  for  aggressive  legislation  con 
trolling  private  morality  has  made  the  control  of 
the  police  a  main  source  of  party  revenue,  and 
dragged  the  saloon  and  brothel,  essentially  retiring 
though  these  institutions  are,  into  politics.  The 
Constitution  ties  up  political  reform  in  the  most 
extraordinary  way,  it  was  planned  by  devout  Re 
publicans  equally  afraid  of  a  dictatorship  and  the 
people;  it  does  not  so  much  distribute  power  as 
disperse  it,  the  machinery  falls  readily  into  the 
hands  of  professional  politicians  with  no  end  to 
secure  but  their  immediate  profit,  and  is  almost 
inaccessible  to  poor  men  who  cannot  make  their 

128 


CORRUPTION 

incomes  in  its  working.  An  increasing  number  of 
wealthy  young  men  have  followed  President  Roose 
velt  into  political  life — one  thinks  of  such  figures  as 
Senator  Colby  of  New  Jersey,  but  they  are  but  in 
cidental  mitigations  of  a  generally  vicious  scheme. 
Before  the  nation,  so  busy  with  its  diversified 
private  affairs,  lies  the  devious  and  difficult  prob 
lem  of  a  great  reconstruction  of  its  political  meth 
ods,  as  a  preliminary  to  any  broad  change  of  its 
social  organization.  .  .  . 

How  vicious  things  are  I  have  had  some  inkling 
in  a  dozen  whispered  stories  of  votes,  of  ballot- 
boxes  rifled,  of  votes  destroyed,  of  the  violent  per 
sonation  of  cowed  and  ill-treated  men.  And  in  Chica 
go  I  saw  a  little  of  the  physical  aspect  of  the  system. 

I  made  the  acquaintance  of  Alderman  Kenna, 
who  is  better  known,  I  found,  throughout  the 
States  as  "Kinky-Dink,"  saw  his  two  saloons  and 
something  of  the  Chinese  quarter  about  him.  He 
is  a  compact,  upright  little  man,  with  iron-gray 
hair,  a  clear  blue  eye,  and  a  dry  manner.  He  wore 
a  bowler  hat  through  all  our  experiences  in  com 
mon,  and  kept  his  hands  in  his  jacket-pockets.  He 
filled  me  with  a  ridiculous  idea,  for  which  I  apolo 
gize,  that  had  it  fallen  to  the  lot  of  Mr.  J.  M.  Barrie 
to  miss  a  university  education,  and  keep  a  saloon 
in  Chicago  and  organize  voters,  he  would  have 
looked  own  brother  to  Mr.  Kenna.  We  com 
menced  in  the  first  saloon,  a  fine,  handsome  place, 
with  mirrors  and  tables  and  decorations  and  a  con- 

129 


THE   FUTURE    IN   AMERICA 

sumption  of  mitigated  mineral  waters  and  beer  in 
bottles;  then  I  was  taken  over  to  see  the  other 
saloon,  the  one  across  the  way.  We  went  behind 
the  counter,  and  while  I  professed  a  comparative 
interest  in  English  and  American  beer-engines,  and 
the  Alderman  exchanged  commonplaces  with  two 
or  three  of  the  shirt-sleeved  barmen,  I  was  able  to 
survey  the  assembled  customers. 

It  struck  me  as  a  pretty  tough  gathering. 

The  first  thing  that  met  the  eye  were  the  schooners 
of  beer.  There  is  nothing  quite  like  the  American 
beer-schooner  in  England.  It  would  appeal  strongly 
to  an  unstinted  appetite  for  beer,  and  I  should  be 
curious  to  try  it  upon  a  British  agricultural  laborer 
and  see  how  many  he  could  hold.  He  would,  I  am 
convinced,  have  to  be  entirely  hollowed  out  to  hold 
two.  Those  I  saw  impressed  me  as  being  about 
the  size  of  small  fish-globes  set  upon  stems,  and 
each  was  filled  with  a  very  substantial-looking  beer 
indeed.  They  stood  in  a  careless  row  all  along  the 
length  of  the  saloon  counter.  Below  them,  in  atti 
tudes  of  negligent  proprietorship,  lounged  the 
"crowd"  in  a  haze  of  smoke  and  conversation. 
For  the  most  part  I  should  think  they  were  Ameri 
canized  immigrants.  I  looked  across  the  counter 
at  them,  met  their  eyes,  got  the  quality  of  their 
faces — and  it  seemed  to  me  I  was  a  very  flimsy  and 
unsubstantial  intellectual  thing  indeed.  It  struck 
me  that  I  would  as  soon  go  to  live  in  a  pen  in  a 
stock-yard  as  into  American  politics. 

130 


CORRUPTION 

That  was  my  momentary  impression.  But  that 
line  of  base  and  coarse  faces  seen  through  the  reek 
was  only  one  sample  of  the  great  saloon  stratum  of 
the  American  population  in  which  resides  political 
power.  They  have  no  ideas  and  they  have  votes; 
they  are  capable,  if  need  be,  of  meeting  violence 
by  violence,  and  that  is  the  sort  of  thing  Ameri 
can  methods  demand.  .  .  . 

Now  Alderman  Kenna  is  a  straight  man,  the  sort 
of  man  one  likes  and  trusts  at  sight,  and  he  did  not 
invent  his  profession.  He  follows  his  own  ideas  of 
right  and  wrong,  and  compared  with  my  ideas  of 
right  and  wrong,  they  seem  tough,  compact,  de 
cided  things.  He  is  very  kind  to  all  his  crowd. 
He  helps  them  when  they  are  in  trouble,  even  if  it 
is  trouble  with  the  police;  he  helps  them  find  em 
ployment  when  they  are  down  on  their  luck;  he 
stands  between  them  and  the  impacts  of  an  un 
sympathetic  and  altogether  too  -  careless  social 
structure  in  a  sturdy  and  almost  parental  way.  I 
can  quite  believe  what  I  was  told,  that  in  the  lives 
of  many  of  these  rough  undesirables  he's  almost 
the  only  decent  influence.  He  gets  wives  well 
treated,  and  he  has  an  open  heart  for  children.  And 
he  tells  them  how  to  vote,  a  duty  of  citizenship 
they  might  otherwise  neglect,  and  sees  that  they 
do  it  properly.  And  whenever  you  want  to  do 
things  in  Chicago  you  must  reckon  carefully  with 
him.  .  .  . 

There  you  have  a  chip,  a  hand  specimen,  from 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

the  basement  structure  upon  which  American  poli 
tics  rest.  That  is  the  remarkable  alternative  to 
private  enterprise  as  things  are  at  present.  It  is 
America's  only  other  way.  If  public  services  are 
to  be  taken  out  of  the  hands  of  such  associations  of 
financiers  as  the  Standard  Oil  group  they  have  to 
be  put  into  the  hands  of  politicians  resting  at  last 
upon  this  sort  of  basis.  Therein  resides  the  im 
possibility  of  socialism  in  America — as  the  case  for 
socialism  is  put  at  present.  The  third  course  is  the 
far  more  complex,  difficult  and  heroic  one  of  creat 
ing  imaginatively  and  bringing  into  being  a  new 
state — a  feat  no  people  in  the  world  has  yet  achieved, 
but  a  feat  that  any  people  which  aspires  to  lead  the 
future  is  bound,  I  think,  to  attempt. 


CHAPTER   IX 
THE    IMMIGRANT 


MY  picture  of  America  assumes  now  a 
The  Flood  certain  definite  form.  I  have  tried  to 
convey  the  effect  of  a  great  and  ener 
getic  English  -  speaking  population  strewn  across  a 
continent  so  vast  as  to  make  it  seem  small  and  thin ; 
I  have  tried  to  show  this  population  caught  by  the 
upward  sweep  of  that  great  increase  in  knowledge 
that  is  everywhere  enlarging  the  power  and  scope  of 
human  effort,  exhilarated  by  it,  and  active  and  hope 
ful  beyond  any  population  the  world  has  ever  seen, 
and  I  have  tried  to  show  how  the  members  of  this  pop 
ulation  struggle  and  differentiate  among  themselves 
in  a  universal  commercial  competition  that  must,  in 
the  end,  if  it  is  not  modified,  divide  them  into  two 
permanent  classes  of  rich  and  poor.  I  have  vent 
ured  to  hint  at  a  certain  emptiness  in  the  resulting 
wealthy,  and  to  note  some  of  the  uglinesses  and 
miseries  inseparable  from  this  competition.  I  have 
tried  to  give  my  impressions  of  the  vague,  yet  widely 
diffused,  will  in  the  nation  to  resist  this  differentia 
ls 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

tion,  and  of  a  dim,  large  movement  of  thought 
towards  a  change  of  national  method.  I  have  glanced 
at  the  debasement  of  politics  that  bars  any  immedi 
ate  hope  of  such  reconstruction.  And  now  it  is  time 
to  introduce  a  new  element  of  obstruction  and  diffi 
culty  into  this  complicating  problem— the  immigrants. 

Into  the  lower  levels  of  the  American  community 
there  pours  perpetually  a  vast  torrent  of  strangers, 
speaking  alien  tongues,  inspired  by  alien  traditions, 
for  the  most  part  illiterate  peasants  and  working- 
people.  They  come  in  at  the  bottom:  that  must  be 
insisted  upon.  An  enormous  and  ever-increasing 
proportion  of  the  laboring  classes,  of  all  the  lower 
class  in  America,  is  of  recent  European  origin,  is 
either  of  foreign  birth  or  foreign  parentage.  The 
older  American  population  is  being  floated  up  on  the 
top  of  this  influx,  a  sterile  aristocracy  above  a  raci 
ally  different  and  astonishingly  fecund  proletariat. 
(For  it  grows  rankly  in  this  new  soil.  One  section 
of  immigrants,  the  Hungarians,  have  here  a  birth 
rate  of  forty-six  in  the  thousand,  the  highest  of  any 
civilized  people  in  the  world.) 

Few  people  grasp  the  true  dimensions  of  this  in 
vasion.  Figures  carry  so  little.  The  influx  has 
clambered  from  half  a  million  to  700,000,  to  800,000 ; 
this  year  the  swelling  figures  roll  up  as  if  they  mean 
to  go  far  over  the  million  mark.  The  flood  swells  to 
overtake  the  total  birth-rate;  it  has  already  over 
topped  the  total  of  births  of  children  to  native- 
American  parents. 


THE   IMMIGRANT 

I  have  already  told  something  of  the  effect  of 
Ellis  Island.  I  have  told  how  I  watched  the  long 
procession  of  simple  -  looking,  hopeful,  sunburned 
country  folk  from  Russia,  from  the  Carpathians, 
from  southern  Italy  and  Turkey  and  Syria,  filing 
through  the  wickets,  bringing  their  young  wives  for 
the  mills  of  Paterson  and  Fall  River,  their  children 
for  the  Pennsylvania  coal-breakers  and  the  cotton- 
mills  of  the  South. 

Yet  there  are  moments  when  I  could  have  imag 
ined  there  were  no  immigrants  at  all.  All  the  time, 
except  for  one  distinctive  evening,  I  seem  to  have 
been  talking  to  English-speaking  men,  now  and  then 
to  the  Irishman,  now  and  then,  but  less  frequently, 
to  an  Americanized  German.  In  the  clubs  there  are 
no  immigrants.  There  are  not  even  Jews,  as  there 
are  in  London  clubs.  One  goes  about  the  wide 
streets  of  Boston,  one  meets  all  sorts  of  Boston 
people,  one  visits  the  State-House;  it's  all  the  au 
thentic  English-speaking  America.  Fifth  Avenue, 
too,  is  America  without  a  touch  of  foreign-born ;  and 
Washington.  You  go  a  hundred  yards  south  of  the 
pretty  Boston  Common  and,  behold!  you  are  in  a 
polyglot  slum!  You  go  a  block  or  so  east  of  Fifth 
Avenue  and  you  are  in  a  vaster,  more  Yiddish  White- 
chapel.  You  cross  from  New  York  to  Staten  Island, 
attracted  by  its  distant  picturesque  suggestion  of 
scattered  homes  among  the  trees,  and  you  discover 
black-tressed,  bold-eyed  women  on  those  pleasant 
verandas,  half-clad  brats,  and  ambiguous  washing, 
10  135 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

where  once  the  native  American  held  his  simple  state. 
You  ask  the  way  of  a  young  man  who  has  just 
emerged  from  a  ramshackle  factory,  and  you  are 
answered  in  some  totally  incomprehensible  tongue. 
You  come  up  again  after  such  a  dive  below,  to  dine 
with  the  original  Americans  again,  talk  with  them, 
go  about  with  them  and  forget.  .  .  . 

In  Boston,  one  Sunday  afternoon,  this  fact  of 
immigration  struck  upon  Mr.  Henry  James: 

"There  went  forward  across  the  cop  of  the  hill  a 
continuous  passage  of  men  and  women,  in  couples 
and  talkative  companies,  who  struck  me  as  laboring 
wage-earners  of  the  simpler  sort  arrayed  in  their 
Sunday  best  and  decently  enjoying  their  leisure  .  .  . 
no  sound  of  English  in  a  single  instance  escaped  their 
lips ;  the  greater  number  spoke  a  rude  form  of  Italian, 
the  others  some  outland  dialect  unknown  to  me — 
though  I  waited  and  waited  to  catch  an  echo  of  an 
tique  refrains." 

That's  one  of  a  series  of  recurrent,  uneasy  ob 
servations  of  this  great  replacement  I  find  in  Mr. 
James's  book. 

The  immigrant  does  not  clamor  for  attention.  He 
is,  indeed,  almost  entirely  inaudible,  inarticulate,  and 
underneath.  He  is  in  origin  a  peasant,  inarticulate, 
and  underneath  by  habit  and  tradition.  Mr.  James 
has,  as  it  were,  to  put  his  ear  to  earth,  to  catch  the 
murmuring  of  strange  tongues.  The  incomer  is  of 
diverse  nationality  and  diverse  tongues,  and  that 
"  breaks  him  up  "  politically  and  socially.  He  drops 

136 


THE   IMMIGRANT 

into  American  clothes,  and  then  he  does  not  catch 
the  careless  eye.  He  goes  into  special  regions  and 
works  there.  Where  Americans  talk  or  think  or 
have  leisure  to  observe,  he  does  not  intrude.  The 
bulk  of  the  Americans  don't  get  as  yet  any  real  sense 
of  his  portentous  multitude  at  all.  He  does  not  read 
very  much,  and  so  he  produces  no  effect  upon  the 
book  trade  or  magazines.  You  can  go  through  such 
a  periodical  as  Harper's  Magazine,  for  example,  from 
cover  to  cover,  and  unless  there  is  some  article  or 
story  bearing  specifically  upon  the  subject  you  might 
doubt  if  there  was  an  immigrant  in  the  country. 
On  the  liner  coming  over,  at  Ellis  Island,  and  some 
times  on  the  railroads  one  saw  him- — him  and  his 
womankind, — in  some  picturesque  east- European 
garb,  very  respectful,  very  polite,  adventurous,  and 
a  little  scared.  Then  he  became  less  visible.  He 
had  got  into  cheap  American  clothes,  resorted  to 
what  naturalists  call  "  protective  mimicry,"  even 
perhaps  acquired  a  collar.  Also  his  bearing  had 
changed,  become  charged  with  a  certain  aggression. 
He  had  got  a  pocket-handkerchief,  and  had  learned 
to  move  fast  and  work  fast,  and  to  chew  and  spit 
with  the  proper  meditative  expression.  One  detect 
ed  him  by  his  diminishing  accent,  and  by  a  few  per 
sistent  traits — rings  in  his  ears,  perhaps,  or  the  like 
adornment.  In  the  next  stage  these  also  had  gone; 
he  had  become  ashamed  of  the  music  of  his  native 
tongue,  and  talked  even  to  his  wife,  on  the  trolley- 
car  and  other  public  places,  at  least,  in  brief  re- 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

markable  American.     Before  that  he  had  become 
ripe  for  a  vote. 

The  next  stage  of  Americanization,  I  suppose,  is 
this  dingy  quick-eyed  citizen  with  his  schooner  of 
beer  in  my  Chicago  saloon — if  it  is  not  that  crumpled 
thing  I  saw  lying  so  still  in  the  sunlight  under  the 
trestle  bridge  on  my  way  to  Washington.  .  .  . 


II 

EVERY  American  above  forty,  and 
most  of  those  below  that  limit,  seem 
to  be  enthusiastic  advocates  of  un 
restricted  immigration.  I  could  not  make  them 
understand  the  apprehension  with  which  this  huge 
dilution  of  the  American  people  with  profoundly 
ignorant  foreign  peasants  rilled  me.  I  rode  out  on 
an  automobile  into  the  pretty  New  York  country 
beyond  Yonkers  with  that  finely  typical  American, 
Mr.  Z. — he  wanted  to  show  me  the  pleasantness  of 
the  land, — and  he  sang  the  song  of  American  con 
fidence,  I  think,  more  clearly  and  loudly  than  any. 
He  told  me  how  everybody  had  hope,  how  every 
body  had  incentive,  how  magnificently  it  was  all 
going  on.  He  told  me — what  is,  I  am  afraid,  a 
widely  spread  delusion — that  elementary  education 
stands  on  a  higher  level  of  efficiency  in  the  States 
than  in  England.  He  had  no  doubt  whatever  of 

138 


THE   IMMIGRANT 

the  national  powers  of  assimilation.  "  Let  them  all 
come/'  he  said,  cheerfully. 

"The  Chinese?"  said  I. 

"We  can  do  with  them  all."  .  .  . 

He  was  exceptional  in  that  extension.  Most 
Americans  stop  at  the  Ural  Mountains,  and  refuse 
the  "Asiatic."  It  was  not  a  matter  for  discussion 
with  him,  but  a  question  of  belief.  He  had  ceased 
to  reason  about  immigration  long  ago.  He  was  a 
man  in  the  fine  autumn  of  life,  abounding  in  honors, 
wrapped  in  furs,  and  we  drove  swiftly  in  his  auto 
mobile,  through  the  spring  sunshine.  ("By  Jove!" 
thought  I,  "you  talk  like  Pippa's  rich  uncle.")  By 
some  half-brother  of  a  coincidence  we  happened  first 
upon  this  monument  commemorating  a  memorable 
incident  of  the  War  of  Independence,  and  then  upon 
that.  He  recalled  details  of  that  great  campaign  as 
Washington  was  fought  out  of  Manhattan  north 
ward.  I  remember  one  stone  among  the  shooting 
trees  that  indicated  where  in  the  Hudson  River  near 
by  a  British  sloop  had  fired  the  first  salute  in  honor 
of  the  American  flag.  That  salute  was  vividly  pres 
ent  still  to  him;  it  echoed  among  the  woods,  it  filled 
him  with  a  sense  of  personal  triumph ;  it  seemed  half 
way  back  to  Agincourt  to  me.  All  that  bright 
morning  the  stars  and  stripes  made  an  almost 
luminous  visible  presence  about  us.  Open-handed 
hospitality  and  confidence  in  God  so  swayed  me  that 
it  is  indeed  only  now,  as  I  put  this  book  together,  I 
see  this  shining  buoyancy,  this  bunting  patriotism, 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

in  its  direct  relation  to  the  Italian  babies  in  the 
cotton-mills,  to  the  sinister  crowd  that  stands  in 
the  saloon  smoking  and  drinking  beer,  an  accumulat 
ing  reserve  of  unintelligent  force  behind  the  ma 
noeuvres  of  the  professional  politicians.  .  .  . 

I  tried  my  views  upon  Commissioner  Watchorn  as 
we  leaned  together  over  the  gallery  railing  and  sur 
veyed  that  bundle-carrying  crowd  creeping  step  by 
step  through  the  wire  filter  of  the  central  hall  of 
Ellis  Island — into  America. 

"You  don't  think  they'll  swamp  you?"  I  said. 

"Now  look  here,"  said  the  Commissioner,  "I'm 
English  born — Derbyshire.  I  came  into  America 
when  I  was  a  lad.  I  had  fifteen  dollars.  And  here 
I  am!  Well,  do  you  expect  me,  now  I'm  here,  to 
shut  the  door  on  any  other  poor  chaps  who  want 
a  start  —  a  start  with  hope  in  it,  in  the  New 
World?" 

A  pleasant-mannered,  a  fair-haired  young  man, 
speaking  excellent  English,  had  joined  us  as  we  went 
round,  and  nodded  approval. 

I  asked  him  for  his  opinion,  and  gathered  he  was 
from  Milwaukee,  and  the  son  of  a  Scandinavian  im 
migrant.  He,  too,  was  for  "fair-play"  and  an  open 
door  for  every  one.  "  Except, "  he  added,  "  Asiatics. " 
So  also,  I  remember,  was  a  very  New  England  lady 
I  met  at  Hull  House,  who  wasn't,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
a  New-Englander  at  all,  but  the  daughter  of  a  Ger 
man  settler  in  the  Middle  West.  They  all  seemed  to 
think  that  I  was  inspired  by  hostility  to  the  im- 

140 


THE   IMMIGRANT 

migrant  in  breathing  any  doubt  about  the  desir 
ability  of  this  immense  process.  .  .  . 

I  tried  in  each  case  to  point  out  that  this  idea  of 
not  being  churlishly  exclusive  did  not  exhaust  the 
subject,  that  the  present  immigration  is  a  different 
thing  entirely  from  the  immigration  of  half  a  century 
ago,  that  in  the  interest  of  the  immigrant  and  his 
offspring  more  than  any  one,  is  the  protest  to  be 
made.  Fifty  years  ago  more  than  half  of  the  tor 
rent  was  English  speaking,  and  the  rest  mostly  from 
the  Teutonic  and  Scandinavian  northwest  of  Europe, 
an  influx  of  people  closely  akin  to  the  native  Amer 
icans  in  temperament  and  social  tradition.  They 
were  able  to  hold  their  own  and  mix  perfectly.  Even 
then  the  quantity  of  illiterate  Irish  produced  a 
marked  degradation  of  political  life.  The  earlier 
immigration  was  an  influx  of  energetic  people  who 
wanted  to  come,  and  who  had  to  put  themselves  to 
considerable  exertion  to  get  here;  it  was  higher  in 
character  and  in  social  quality  than  the  present  flood. 
The  immigration  of  to-day  is  largely  the  result  of 
energetic  canvassing  by  the  steamship  companies; 
it  is,  in  the  main,  an  importation  of  laborers  and  not 
of  economically  independent  settlers,  and  it  is  in 
creasingly  alien  to  the  native  tradition.  The  bulk 
of  it  is  now  Italian,  Russian  Jewish,  Russian,  Hun 
garian,  Croatian,  Roumanian,  and  eastern  European 
generally. 

"The  children  learn  English,  and  become  more 
American  and  better  patriots  than  the  Americans," 

141 


THE   FUTURE    IN   AMERICA 

Commissioner  Watchorn — echoing  everybody  in  that 
— told  me.  ... 

(In  Boston  one  optimistic  lady  looked  to  the 
Calabrian  and  Sicilian  peasants  to  introduce  an 
artistic  element  into  the  population — no  doubt  be 
cause  they  come  from  the  same  peninsula  that  pro 
duced  the  Florentines.) 


in 

WILL  the  reader  please  remember  that 
Assimilation  I've  been  just  a  few  weeks  in  the  States 
altogether,  and  value  my  impressions 
at  that!  And  will  he,  nevertheless,  read  of  doubts 
that  won't  diminish.  I  doubt  very  much  if  America 
is  going  to  assimilate  all  that  she  is  taking  in  now; 
much  more  do  I  doubt  that  she  will  assimilate  the 
still  greater  inflow  of  the  coming  years.  I  believe 
she  is  going  to  find  infinite  difficulties  in  that  task. 
By  "assimilate"  I  mean  make  intelligently  co-opera 
tive  citizens  of  these  people.  She  will,  I  have  no 
doubt  whatever,  impose  upon  them  a  bare  use  of  the 
English  language,  and  give  them  votes  and  certain 
patriotic  persuasions,  but  I  believe  that  if  things 
go  on  as  they  are  going  the  great  mass  of  them  will 
remain  a  very  low  lower  class — will  remain  largely 
illiterate  industrialized  peasants.  They  are  decent- 
minded  peasant  people,  orderly,  industrious  people, 
rather  dirty  in  their  habits,  and  with  a  low  standard 

142 


THE   IMMIGRANT 

of  life.  Wherever  they  accumulate  in  numbers  they 
present  to  my  eye  a  social  phase  far  below  the  level 
of  either  England,  France,  north  Italy,  or  Switzer 
land.  And,  frankly,  I  do  not  find  the  American 
nation  has  either  in  its  schools — which  are  as  back 
ward  in  some  States  as  they  are  forward  in  others — 
in  its  press,  in  its  religious  bodies  or  its  general  tone, 
any  organized  means  or  effectual  influences  for 
raising  these  huge  masses  of  humanity  to  the  require 
ments  of  an  ideal  modern  civilization.  They  are,  to 
rny  mind,  " biting  off  more  than  they  can  chaw"  in 
this  matter. 

I  got  some  very  interesting  figures  from  Dr.  Hart, 
of  the  Children's  Home  and  Aid  Society,  Chicago, 
in  this  matter.  He  was  pleading  for  the  immigrant 
against  my  scepticisms.  He  pointed  out  to  me  that 
the  generally  received  opinion  that  the  European  im 
migrants  are  exceptionally  criminal  is  quite  wrong. 
The  1 900  census  report  collapsed  after  a  magnificent 
beginning,  and  its  figures  are  not  available,  but  from 
the  earlier  records  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
percentage  of  criminals  among  the  " foreign-born" 
is  higher  than  that  among  the  native-born.  This, 
however,  is  entirely  due  to  the  high  criminal  record 
of  the  French  Canadians  in  the  Northeast,  and  the 
Mexicans  in  Arizona,  who  are  not  over-seas  immi 
grants  at  all.  The  criminal  statistics  of  the  French 
Canadians  in  the  States  should  furnish  useful  matter 
for  the  educational  controversy  in  Great  Britain. 
Allowing  for  their  activities— which  appear  to  be 


THE   FUTURE    IN   AMERICA 

based  on  an  education  of  peculiar  religious  virtue — 
the  figures  bring  the  criminal  percentage  among  the 
foreigners  far  below  that  of  the  native-born.  But 
Dr.  Hart's  figures  also  showed  very  clearly  some 
thing  further :  as  between  the  offspring  of  native  and 
foreign  parents  the  preponderance  of  crime  is  enor 
mously  on  the  side  of  the  latter. 

That,  at  any  rate,  falls  in  with  my  own  precon 
ceptions  and  roving  observations.  Bear  in  mind 
always  that  this  is  just  one  questioning  individual's 
impression.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  immigrant 
arrives  an  artless,  rather  uncivilized,  pious,  good- 
hearted  peasant,  with  a  disposition  towards  sub 
missive  industry  and  rude  effectual  moral  habits. 
America,  it  is  alleged,  makes  a  man  of  him.  It 
seems  to  me  that  all  too  often  she  makes  an  in 
furiated  toiler  of  him,  tempts  him  with  dollars  and 
speeds  him  up  with  competition,  hardens  him, 
coarsens  his  manners,  and,  worst  crime  of  all,  lures 
and  forces  him  to  sell  his  children  into  toil.  The 
home  of  the  immigrant  in  America  looks  to  me  worse 
than  the  home  he  came  from  in  Italy.  It  is  just  as 
dirty,  it  is  far  less  simple  and  beautiful,  the  food  is 
no  more  wholesome,  the  moral  atmosphere  far  less 
wholesome;  and,  as  a  consequence,  the  child  of  the 
immigrant  is  a  worse  man  than  his  father. 

I  am  fully  aware  of  the  generosity,  the  nobility  of 
sentiment  which  underlies  the  American  objection  to 
any  hindrance  to  immigration.  But  either  that 
general  sentiment  should  be  carried  out  to  a  logical 

144 


THE    IMMIGRANT 

completeness  and  a  gigantic  and  costly  machinery 
organized  to  educate  and  civilize  these  people  as 
they  come  in,  or  it  should  be  chastened  to  restrict  the 
inflow  to  numbers  assimilable  under  existing  condi 
tions.  At  present,  if  we  disregard  sentiment,  if  we 
deny  the  alleged  need  of  gross  flattery  whenever  one 
writes  of  America  for  Americans,  and  state  the  bare 
facts  of  the  case,  they  amount  to  this:  that  America, 
in  the  urgent  process  of  individualistic  industrial 
development,  in  its  feverish  haste  to  get  through 
with  its  material  possibilities,  is  importing  a  large 
portion  of  the  peasantry  of  central  and  eastern 
Europe,  and  converting  it  into  a  practically  illiterate 
industrial  proletariat.  In  doing  this  it  is  doing  a 
something  that,  however  different  in  spirit,  differs 
from  the  slave  trade  of  its  early  history  only  in  the 
narrower  gap  between  employer  and  laborer.  In  the 
"colored"  population  America  has  already  ten  mill 
ion  descendants  of  unassimilated  and  perhaps  un- 
assimilable  labor  immigrants.  These  people  are  not 
only  half  civilized  and  ignorant,  but  they  have  in 
fected  the  white  population  about  them  with  a 
kindred  ignorance.  For  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
if  an  Englishman  or  Scotchman  of  the  year  1 500  were 
to  return  to  earth  and  seek  his  most  retrograde  and 
decivilized  descendants,  he  would  find  them  at  last 
among  the  white  and  colored  population  south  of 
Washington.  And  I  have  a  foreboding  that  in  this 
mixed  flood  of  workers  that  pours  into  America  by 
the  million  to-day,  in  this  torrent  of  ignorance, 


THE   FUTURE  IN   AMERICA 

against  which  that  heroic  being,  the  schoolmarm, 
battles  at  present  all  unaided  by  men,  there  is  to  be 
found  the  possibility  of  another  dreadful  separation 
of  class  and  kind,  a  separation  perhaps  not  so  pro 
found  but  far  more  universal.  One  sees  the  possi 
bility  of  a  rich  industrial  and  mercantile  aristocracy 
of  western  European  origin,  dominating  a  darker- 
haired,  darker -eyed,  uneducated  proletariat  from 
central  and  eastern  Europe.  The  immigrants  are 
being  given  votes,  I  know,  but  that  does  not  free 
them,  it  only  enslaves  the  country.  The  negroes 
were  given  votes. 

That  is  the  quality  of  the  danger  as  I  see  it.  But 
before  this  indigestion  of  immigrants  becomes  an  in 
curable  sickness  of  the  States  many  things  may  hap 
pen.  There  is  every  sign,  as  I  have  said,  that  a  great 
awakening,  a  great  disillusionment,  is  going  on  in  the 
American  mind.  The  Americans  have  become  sud 
denly  self -critical,  are  hot  with  an  unwonted  fever 
for  reform  and  constructive  effort.  This  swamping 
of  the  country  may  yet  be  checked.  They  may 
make  a  strenuous  effort  to  emancipate  children  be 
low  fifteen  from  labor,  and  so  destroy  one  of  the 
chief  inducements  of  immigration.  Once  convince 
them  that  their  belief  in  the  superiority  of  their 
public  schools  to  those  of  England  and  Germany  is 
an  illusion,  or  at  least  that  their  schools  are  inade 
quate  to  the  task  before  them,  and  it  may  be  they 
will  perform  some  swift  American  miracle  of  educa 
tional  organization  and  finance.  For  all  the  very 

146 


THE   IMMIGRANT 

heavy  special  educational  charges  that  are  needed  if 
the  immigrant  is  really  to  be  assimilated,  it  seems  a 
reasonable  proposal  that  immigration  should  pay. 
Suppose  the  new-comer  were  presently  to  be  taxed  on 
arrival  for  his  own  training  and  that  of  any  children 
he  had  with  him,  that  again  would  check  the  inrush 
very  greatly.  Or  the  steamship  company  might  be 
taxed,  and  left  to  settle  the  trouble  with  the  im 
migrant  by  raising  his  fare.  And  finally,  it  may  be 
that  if  the  line  is  drawn,  as  it  seems  highly  probable 
it  will  be,  at  ''Asiatics,"  then  there  may  even  be  a 
drying  up  of  the  torrent  at  its  source.  The  European 
countries  are  not  unlimited  reservoirs  of  offspring. 
As  they  pass  from  their  old  conditions  into  more  and 
more  completely  organized  modern  industrial  states, 
they  develop  a  new  internal  equilibrium  and  cease 
to  secrete  an  excess  of  population.  England  no 
longer  supplies  any  great  quantity  of  Americans; 
Scotland  barely  any ;  France  is  exhausted ;  Ire 
land,  Germany,  Scandinavia  have,  it  seems,  dis 
gorged  nearly  all  their  surplus  load,  and  now  run 
dry.  .  .  . 

These  are  all  mitigations  of  the  outlook,  but  still 
the  dark  shadow  of  disastrous  possibility  remains. 
The  immigrant  comes  in  to  weaken  and  confuse  the 
counsels  of  labor,  to  serve  the  purposes  of  corruption, 
to  complicate  any  economic  and  social  development, 
above  all  to  retard  enormously  the  development  of 
that  national  consciousness  and  will  on  which  the 
hope  of  the  future  depends. 

i47 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

IV 

I  TOLD   these  doubts   of  mine  to  a 

mal   ^ 

Alliance 


The  Educational  pieasant  young  lady  of  New  York,  who 


seems  to  find  much  health  and  a  sus 
taining  happiness  in  settlement  work  on  the  East 
Side.  She  scorned  my  doubts.  "Children  make 
better  citizens  than  the  old  Americans,"  she  said, 
like  one  who  quotes  a  classic,  and  took  me  with  her 
forthwith  to  see  the  central  school  of  the  Educational 
Alliance,  that  fine  imposing  building  in  East  Broad 
way. 

It's  a  thing  I'm  glad  not  to  have  missed.  I  recall 
a  large  cool  room  with  a  sloping  floor,  tier  rising 
above  tier  of  seats  and  desks,  and  a  big  class  of 
bright-eyed  Jewish  children,  boys  and  girls,  each 
waving  two  little  American  flags  to  the  measure  of 
the  song  they  sang,  singing  to  the  accompaniment 
of  the  piano  on  the  platform  beside  us. 

"God  bless  our  native  land,"  they  sang — with  a 
considerable  variety  of  accent  and  distinctness,  but 
with  a  very  real  emotion. 

Some  of  them  had  been  in  America  a  month,  some 
much  longer,  but  here  they  were — under  the  aus 
pices  of  the  wealthy  Hebrews  of  New  York  and  Mr. 
Blaustein's  enthusiastic  direction — being  American 
ized.  They  sang  of  America — "sweet  land  of 
liberty";  they  stood  up  and  drilled  with  the  little 
bright  pretty  flags;  swish  they  crossed  and  swish 
they  waved  back,  a  waving  froth  of  flags  and  flushed 

148 


THE   IMMIGRANT 

children's  faces ;  and  they  stood  up  and  repeated  the 
oath  of  allegiance,  and  at  the  end  filed  tramping  by 
me  and  out  of  the  hall.  The  oath  they  take  is  finely 
worded.  It  runs: 

"Flag  our  great  Republic,  inspirer  in  battle, 
guardian  of  our  homes,  whose  stars  and  stripes  stand 
for  bravery,  purity,  truth,  and  union,  we  salute 
thee!  We,  the  natives  of  distant  lands,  who  find 
rest  under  thy  folds,  do  pledge  our  hearts,  our  lives, 
and  our  sacred  honor  to  love  and  protect  thee,  our 
country,  and  the  liberty  of  the  American  people 
forever." 

I  may  have  been  fanciful,  but  as  I  stood  aside  and 
watched  them  going  proudly  past,  it  seemed  to  me 
that  eyes  met  mine,  triumphant  and  victorious  eyes 
— for  was  I  not  one  of  these  British  from  whom  free 
dom  was  won  ?  But  that  was  an  ignoble  suspicion. 
They  had  been  but  a  few  weeks  in  America,  and  that 
light  in  their  eyes  was  just  a  brotherly  challenge  to 
one  they  supposed  a  fellow-citizen  who  stood  unduly 
thoughtful  amid  their  rhythmic  exaltation.  They 
tramped  out  and  past  with  their  flags  and  guidons. 

"It  is  touching!"  whispered  my  guide,  and  I  saw 
she  had  caught  a  faint  reflection  of  that  glow  that  lit 
the  children. 

I  told  her  it  was  the  most  touching  thing  I  had 
seen  in  America. 

And  so  it  remains. 

Think  of  the  immense  promise  in  it !  Think  of  the 
flower  of  belief  and  effort  that  may  spring  from  this 

149 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

warm  sowing!  We  passed  out  of  this  fluttering 
multiplication  of  the  most  beautiful  flag  in  the 
world,  into  streets  abominable  with  offal  and  inde 
scribable  filth,  and  dark  and  horrible  under  the 
thunderous  girders  of  the  Elevated  railroad,  to  our 
other  quest  for  that  morning,  a  typical  New  York 
tenement.  For  I  wanted  to  see  one,  with  practically 
windowless  bedrooms.  .  .  . 

The  Educational  Alliance  is  of  course  not  a  public 
institution;  it  was  organized  by  Hebrews,  and  con 
ducted  for  Hebrews,  chiefly  for  the  benefit  of  the 
Hebrew  immigrant.  It  is  practically  the  only  or 
ganized  attempt  to  Americanize  the  immigrant  child. 
After  the  children  have  mastered  sufficient  English 
and  acquired  the  simpler  elements  of  patriotism — 
which  is  practically  no  more  than  an  emotional 
attitude  towards  the  flag — they  pass  on  into  the 
ordinary  public  schools. 

"Yes,"  I  told  my  friend,  "I  know  how  these 
children  feel.  That,  less  articulate  perhaps,  but 
no  less  sincere,  is  the  thing  —  something  between 
pride  and  a  passionate  desire  —  that  fills  three- 
quarters  of  the  people  at  Ellis  Island  now.  They 
come  ready  to  love  and  worship,  ready  to  bow  down 
and  kiss  the  folds  of  your  flag.  They  give  them 
selves — they  want  to  give.  Do  you  know  I,  too, 
have  come  near  feeling  that  at  times  for  America."  .  . . 

We  were  separated  for  a  while  by  a  long  hole  in  the 
middle  of  the  street  and  a  heap  of  builder's  refuse. 
Before  we  came  within  talking  distance  again  I  was 

150 


THE   IMMIGRANT 

in  reaction  against  the  gleam  of  satisfaction  my  last 
confession  had  evoked. 

"In  the  end,"  I  said,  "you  Americans  won't  be 
able  to  resist  it." 

"Resist  what?" 

"You'll  respect  your  country,"  I  said. 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

In  those  crowded  noisy  East  Side  streets  one  has 
to  shout,  and  shout  compact  things.  "This!"  I 
said  to  the  barbaric  disorder  about  us.  "Lynching! 
Child  Labor!  Graft!" 

Then  we  were  separated  by  a  heap  of  decaying 
fish  that  some  hawker  had  dumped  in  the  gutter. 

My  companion  shouted  something  I  did  not  catch. 

"We'll  tackle  it!"  she  repeated. 

I  looked  at  her,  bright  and  courageous  and  youth 
ful,  a  little  overconfident,  I  thought,  but  extremely 
reassuring,  going  valiantly  through  a  disorderly 
world  of  obstacles,  and  for  the  moment  —  I  sup 
pose  that  \vaving  bunting  and  the  children's  voices 
had  got  into  my  head  a  little — I  forgot  all  sorts  of 
things.  .  .  . 

I  could  have  imagined  her  the  spirit  of  America 
incarnate  rather  than  a  philanthropic  young  lady  of 
New  York. 


CHAPTER   X 
STATE-BLINDNESS 


IN  what  I  have  written  so  far,  I  have 

Sensta°tfethe  tried  to  Set  tne  effect  of  the  American 
outlook,  the  American  task,  the  Amer 
ican  problem  as  a  whole,  as  it  has  presented  itself  to 
me.  Clearly,  as  I  see  it,  it  is  a  mental  and  moral 
issue.  There  seems  to  me  an  economic  process 
going  on  that  tends  to  concentrate  first  wealth  and 
then  power  in  the  hands  of  a  small  number  of  ad 
venturous  individuals  of  no  very  high  intellectual 
type,  a  huge  importation  of  alien  and  unassimilable 
workers,  and  a  sustained  disorder  of  local  and 
political  administration.  Correlated  with  this  is  a 
great  increase  in  personal  luxury  and  need.  In  all 
these  respects  there  is  a  strong  parallelism  between 
the  present  condition  of  the  United  States  and  the 
Roman  Republic  in  the  time  of  the  early  Caesars ;  and 
arguing  from  these  alone  one  might  venture  to  fore 
cast  the  steady  development  of  an  exploiting  and 
devastating  plutocracy,  leading  perhaps  to  Cassarism, 
and  a  progressive  decline  in  civilization  and  social 

152 


STATE-BLINDNESS 

solidarity.  But  there  are  forces  of  recuperation  and 
construction  in  America  such  as  the  earlier  instance 
did  not  display.  There  is  infinitely  more  original 
and  originating  thought  in  the  state,  there  are  the 
organized  forces  of  science,  a  habit  of  progress,  clearer 
and  wider  knowledge  among  the  general  mass  of  the 
people.  These  promise,  and  must,  indeed,  inevit 
ably  make,  some  synthetic  effort  of  greater  or  less 
homogeneity  and  force.  It  is  upon  that  synthetic 
effort  that  the  distinctive  destiny  of  America  de 
pends. 

I  propose  to  go  on  now  to  discuss  the  mental 
quality  of  America  as  I  have  been  able  to  focus  it. 
(Remember  always  that  I  am  an  undiplomatic 
tourist  of  no  special  knowledge  or  authority,  who 
came,  moreover,  to  America  with  certain  prepos 
sessions.)  And  first,  and  chiefly,  I  have  to  convey 
what  seems  to  me  the  most  significant  and  pregnant 
thing  of  all.  It  is  a  matter  of  something  wanting, 
that  the  American  shares  with  the  great  mass  of 
prosperous  middle-class  people  in  England.  I  think 
it  is  best  indicated  by  saying  that  the  typical  Amer 
ican  has  no  "  sense  of  the  state. "  I  do  not  mean  that 
he  is  not  passionately  and  vigorously  patriotic.  But 
I  mean  that  he  has  no  perception  that  his  business 
activities,  his  private  employments,  are  constituents 
in  a  large  collective  process;  that  they  affect  other 
people  and  the  world  forever,  and  cannot,  as  he 
imagines,  begin  and  end  with  him.  He  sees  the 
world  in  fragments;  it  is  to  him  a  multitudinous 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

collection  of  individual  "stories"  —as  the  news 
papers  put  it.  If  one  studies  an  American  newspaper, 
one  discovers  it  is  all  individuality,  all  a  matter  of 
personal  doings,  of  wThat  so  and  so  said  and  how  so 
and  so  felt.  And  all  these  individualities  are  un- 
fused.  Not  a  touch  of  abstraction  or  generalization, 
no  thinnest  atmosphere  of  reflection,  mitigates  these 
harsh,  emphatic,  isolated  happenings.  The  Amer 
ican,  it  seems  to  me,  has  yet  to  achieve  what  is, 
after  all,  the  product  of  education  and  thought, 
the  conception  of  a  whole  to  which  all  individual 
acts  and  happenings  are  subordinate  and  contrib 
utory. 

When  I  say  this  much,  I  do  not  mean  to  insinuate 
that  any  other  nation  in  the  world  has  any  superiority 
in  this  matter.  But  I  do  want  to  urge  that  the 
American  problem  is  pre-eminently  one  that  must 
be  met  by  broad  ways  of  thinking,  by  creative, 
synthetic,  and  merging  ideas,  and  that  a  great  num 
ber  of  Americans  seem  to  lack  these  altogether. 


ii 

LET  me  by  way  of  illustration  give  a 
specimen  American  mind.     It  is  not  the 
mind  of  a  writer  or  philosopher,  it  is 
just  a  plain  successful  business  -  man  who  exposes 
himself,  and  makes  it  clear  that  this  want  of  any 
sense  of  the  state  of  any  large  duty  of  constructive 


STATE-BLINDNESS 

loyalty,  is  not  an  idiosyncrasy,  but  the  quality  of  all 
his  circle,  his  friends,  his  religious  teacher.  .  .  . 

I  found  my  specimen  in  a  book  called  With  John 
Bull  and  Jonathan.  It  contains  the  rather  rambling 
reminiscences  of  Mr.  J.  Morgan  Richards,  the 
wealthy  and  successful  London  agent  of  a  great 
number  of  well  -  advertised  American  proprietary 
articles,  and  I  read  it  first,  I  will  confess,  chiefly  in 
search  of  such  delightful  phrases  as  the  one  "  mam 
moth  in  character"  I  have  already  quoted.  But 
there  were  few  to  equal  that  first  moment's  bright 
discovery.  What  I  got  from  it  finally  wasn't  so 
much  that  sort  of  thing  as  this  realization  of  Mr. 
Richards 's  peculiar  quality,  this  acute  sense  of  all 
that  he  hadn't  got.  Mr.  Richards  told  of  adver 
tising  enterprises,  of  contracts  and  journey  ings,  of 
his  great  friendship  with  the  late  Dr.  Parker,  of  his 
domestic  affairs,  and  all  the  changes  in  the  world 
that  had  struck  him,  and  of  a  remarkable  dining 
club,  called  (paradoxically)  the  Sphinx,  in  which 
the  giants  (or  are  they  the  mammoths  ?)  of  the  world 
of  advertisement  foregather.  He  gave  his  portrait, 
and  the  end-paper  presented  him  playfully  as  the 
jolly  president  of  the  Sphinx  Club,  champagne- 
bottle  crowned,  but  else  an  Egyptian  monarch;  and 
on  the  cover  are  two  gilt  hands  clasped  across  a  gilt 
ripple  of  sea  (" hands  across  the  sea"),  tinder  inter 
twining  English  and  American  flags.  From  the 
book  one  got  an  effect,  garrulous  perhaps,  but  on  the 
whole  not  unpleasing,  of  an  elderly  but  still  active 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

business  personality  quite  satisfied  by  his  achieve 
ments,  and  representative  of  I  know  not  what  pro 
portion,  but  at  any  rate  a  considerable  proportion,  of 
his  fellow-countrymen.  And  one  got  an  effect  of  a 
being  not  simply  indifferent  to  the  health  and  vigor 
and  growth  of  the  community  of  which  he  was  a 
part,  but  unaware  of  its  existence. 

He  displays  this  irresponsibility  of  the  commercial 
mind  so  illuminatingly  because  he  does  in  a  way 
attempt  to  tell  something  more  than  his  personal 
story.  He  notes  the  changes  in  the  world  about 
him,  how  this  has  improved  and  that  progressed, 
which  contrasts  between  England  and  America 
struck  upon  his  mind.  That  he  himself  is  respon 
sible  amid  these  changes  never  seems  to  dawn  upon 
him.  His  freedom  from  any  sense  of  duty  to  the 
world  as  a  whole,  of  any  subordination  of  trading  to 
great  ideas,  is  naive  and  fundamental.  He  tells  of 
how  he  arranged  with  the  authorities  in  charge  of  the 
Independence  Day  celebrations  on  Boston  Common 
to  display  "three  large  pieces"  containing  the  name 
of  a  certain  " bitters,"  which  they  did,  and  how  this 
no  doubt  very  desirable  commodity  was  first  largely 
advertised  throughout  the  United  States  in  the  fall  of 
1 86 1,  and  rapidly  became  the  success  of  the  day,  be 
cause  of  the  enormous  amount  of  placarding  given  to 
the  cabalistic  characters  'S-T- i86o-X.'  Those 
strange  letters  and  figures  stared  upon  people  from 
wall  and  fence  and  tree,  in  every  leading  town 
throughout  the  United  States.  They  were  painted 

156 


STATE-BLINDNESS 

on  the  rocks  of  the  Hudson  River  to  such  an  extent 
that  the  attention  of  the  Legislature  was  drawn  to 
the  fact,  and  a  law  was  passed  to  prevent  the  further 
disfigurement  of  river  scenery." 

He  calls  this  "cute."  He  tells,  too,  of  his  educa 
tional  work  upon  the  English  press,  how  he  won  it 
over  to  "display"  advertisements,  and  devised  "the 
first  sixteen-sheet  double-demy  poster  ever  seen  in 
England  in  connection  with  a  proprietary  article." 
He  introduced  the  smoking  of  cigarettes  into  England 
against  great  opposition.  Mr.  Richards  finds  no  in 
congruity,  but  apparently  a  very  delightful  associa 
tion,  in  the  fact  that  this  great  victory  for  the 
adolescent's  cigarette  was  won  on  the  site  of  Strud- 
wick's  house,  wherein  John  Bunyan  died,  and  hard 
by  the  path  of  the  Smithfield  martyrs  to  their  fiery 
sacrifice.  Both  they  and  Mr.  Richards  "lit  such  a 
candle  in  England- 
Well,  my  business  is  not  to  tell  of  the  feats  by 
which  Mr.  Richards  grew  wealthy  and  important  as  a 
tree  may  grow  and  flourish  amid  the  masonry  it 
helps  to  disintegrate.  My  business  is  purely  with 
his  insensibility  to  the  state  as  an  aspect  of  his  per 
sonal  life.  It  is  insensibility  —  not  disregard  or 
hostility.  One  gets  an  impression  from  this  book 
that  if  Mr.  Richards  had  lived  in  a  different  culture, 
he  would  have  been  a  generous  giver  of  himself.  In 
spite  of  his  curious  incapacity  to  appreciate  any  issues 
larger  than  large  enterprises  in  selling,  he  is  very 
evidently  a  religious  man.  He  sat  under  the  late 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

Dr.  Parker  of  the  rich  and  prosperous  City  Temple, 
and  that  reverend  gentleman's  leonine  visage  adorns 
the  book.  Its  really  the  light  one  gets  on  Dr. 
Parker  and  his  teaching  that  appeals  to  me  most  in 
this  volume.  For  this  gentleman  Mr.  Richards  seems 
to  have  entertained  a  feeling  approaching  reverence. 
He  notes  such  details  as : 

"At  the  conclusion  of  an  invocation  or  prayer,  his 
habit  always  was  to  make  a  pause  of  a  few  seconds 
before  pronouncing  'Amen/  This  was  most  im 
pressive.  .  .  . 

"He  spoke  such  words  as  'God/  'Jesus  Christ/ 
'No/  'Yes,'  'Nothing/  in  a  way  to  give  more 
value  to  each  word  than  any  speaker  I  have  ever 
heard." 

They  became  great  friends,  rarely  a  week  passed 
without  their  meeting,  and,  says  Mr.  Richards,  he 
"was  pleased,  in  the  course  of  time,  to  honor  me 
with  his  confidence  in  a  marked  degree,  as  though 
he  recognized  in  me  some  quality  which  satisfied  his 
judgment,  that  I  could  be  trusted  in  business  ques 
tions  quite  apart  from  those  relating  to  his  church. 
He  was  not  only  a  born  preacher,  but  possessed  a 
marvellous  grasp  of  sound,  practical  knowledge 
upon  the  affairs  of  the  day.  I  often  consulted  with 
him  regarding  my  own  affairs,  always  getting  the 
most  practical  help." 

When  Dr.  Parker  came  to  America,  the  two 
friends  corresponded  warmly,  and  several  of  the 
letters  are  quoted.  Even  "£5000  a  year  easily 

158 


STATE-BLINDNESS 

made"  could  not  tempt  him  from  London  and  the 
modest  opulence  of  the  City  Temple.  .  .  . 

But  my  business  now  is  not  to  dwell  on  these 
characteristic  details,  but  to  point  out  that  Mr. 
Richards  does  not  stand  alone  in  the  entire  detach 
ment,  not  only  of  his  worldly  achievements,  but  of 
his  spiritual  life,  from  any  creative  solicitude  for  the 
state.  If  he  was  merely  an  isolated  " character"  I 
should  have  no  concern  with  him.  His  association 
with  Dr.  Parker  shows  most  luminously  that  he 
presents  a  whole  cult  of  English  and  American  rich 
traders,  who  in  America  "sat  under"  such  men  as 
the  Rev.  Henry  Ward  Beecher,  for  example,  who  evi 
dently  stand  for  much  more  in  America  than  in  Eng 
land,  and  who,  so  far  as  the  state  and  political  and 
social  work  go,  are  scarcely  of  more  use,  are  probably 
more  hindrance,  than  any  organization  of  selfish  vo 
luptuaries  of  equal  wealth  and  numbers.  It  is  a 
cult,  it  has  its  teachers  and  its  books.  I  have  had  a 
glimpse  of  one  of  its  manuals.  I  find  Mr.  Richards 
quoting  with  approval  Dr.  Parker's  "Ten  General 
Commandments  for  Men  of  Business,"  command 
ments  which  strike  me  as  not  only  State-blind,  but 
utterly  God-blind,  which  are,  indeed,  no  more  than 
shrewd  counsels  for  "getting  on."  It  is  really  quite 
horrible  stuff  morally.  "Thou  shalt  not  hobnob 
with  idle  persons,"  parodies  Dr.  Parker  in  command 
ment  V.,  so  glossing  richly  upon  the  teachings  of  Him 
who  ate  with  publicans  and  sinners,  and  (no  doubt 
to  instil  the  advisability  of  keeping  one's  more 


THE   FUTURE   IN  AMERICA 

delicate  business  procedure  in  one's  own  hands), 
"Thou  shalt  not  forget  that  a  servant  who  can  tell 
lies  for  thee,  may  one  day  tell  lies  to  thee."  .  .  . 

I  am  not  throwing  any  doubt  upon  the  sincerity 
of  Dr.  Parker  and  Mr.  Richards.  I  believe  that 
nothing  could  exceed  the  transparent  honesty  that 
ends  this  record  which  tells  of  a  certain  bitters 
pushed  at  the  sacrifice  of  beautiful  scenery,  of  a 
successful  propaganda  of  cigarette-smoking,  and  of 
all  sorts  of  proprietary  articles  landed  well  home  in 
their  gastric  target  of  a  whole  life  lost,  indeed,  in 
commercial  self-seeking,  with  "What  shall  I  render 
unto  the  Lord  for  all  his  benefits?" 

"  The  Now  is  an  atom  of  Sand, 

And  the  Near  is  a  perishing  Clod, 
But  Afar  is  a  fairyland, 

And  Beyond  is  the  Bosom  of  God." 

What  I  have  to  insist  upon  now  is  that  this  is  a 
sample,  and,  so  far  as  I  can  tell,  a  fair  sample,  of  the 
quality  and  trend  of  the  mind-stuff  and  the  breadth 
and  height  of  the  tradition  of  a  large  and  I  know 
not  how  influential  mass  of  prosperous  middle- 
class  English,  and  of  a  much  more  prosperous  and  in 
fluential  and  important  section  of  Americans.  They 
represent  much  energy,  they  represent  much  prop 
erty,  they  are  a  factor  to  reckon  with.  They  pre 
sent  a  powerful  opposing  force  to  anything  that  will 
suppress  their  disgusting  notice-boards  or  analyze 
their  ambiguous  "proprietary  articles,"  or  tax  their 

1 60 


STATE-BLINDNESS 

gettings  for  any  decent  public  purpose.  And  here  I 
find  them  selling  poisons  as  pain-killers,  and  alcohol 
as  tonics,  and  fighting  ably  and  boldly  to  silence  ad 
verse  discussion.  In  the  face  of  the  great  needs  that 
lie  before  America  their  active  trivality  of  soul,  their 
energy  and  often  unscrupulous  activity,  and  their 
quantitative  importance  become,  to  my  mind,  ad 
verse  and  threatening,  a  stumbling-block  for  hope. 
For  the  impression  I  have  got  by  going  to  and  fro 
in  America  is  that  Mr,  Richards  is  a  fair  sample  of 
at  least  the  older  type  of  American.  So  far  as  I  can 
learn,  Mr.  J.  D.  Rockefeller  is  just  another  product 
of  the  same  cult.  You  meet  these  older  types  every 
where,  they  range  from  fervent  piety  and  temper 
ance  to  a  hearty  drinking,  "story "-telling,  poker- 
playing  type,  but  they  have  in  common  a  sharp, 
shrewd,  narrow,  business  habit  of  mind  that  ignores 
the  future  and  the  state  altogether.  But  I  do  not 
find  the  younger  men  are  following  in  their  lines. 
Some  are.  But  just  how  many  and  to  what  extent, 
I  do  not  know.  It  is  very  hard  for  a  literary  man  to 
estimate  the  quantity  and  importance  of  ideas  in  a 
community.  The  people  he  meets  naturally  all 
entertain  ideas,  or  they  would  not  come  in  his  way. 
The  people  who  have  new  ideas  talk ;  those  who  have 
not,  go  about  their  business.  But  I  hazard  an 
opinion  that  Young  America  now  presents  an  al 
together  different  type  from  the  young  men  of  enter 
prise  and  sound  Baptist  and  business  principles  who 
were  the  backbone  of  the  irresponsible  commercial 

161 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

America  of  yesterday,  the  America  that  rebuilt 
Chicago  on  "floating  foundations,"  covered  the 
world  with  advertisement  boards,  gave  the  great 
cities  the  elevated  railroads,  and  organized  the 
trusts. 


in 

I   SPENT    a    curious    day    amid    the 
Oneida        memories  of  that  strangely  interesting 
social    experiment,    the    Oneida    Com 
munity,  and  met  a  most  significant  contemporary, 
"live  American"  of  the  newer  school,  in  the  son  of 
the    founder    and    the    present    head    of    "Oneida 
Limited." 

There  are  moments  when  that  visit  I  paid  to 
Oneida  seems  to  me  to  stand  for  all  America.  The 
place,  you  know,  was  once  the  seat  of  a  perfectionist 
community;  the  large  red  community  buildings 
stand  now  among  green  lawns  and  ripening  trees,  and 
I  dined  in  the  communal  dining-room,  and  visited 
the  library,  and  saw  the  chain  and  trap  factory,  and 
the  silk-spinning  factory  and  something  of  all  its 
industries.  I  talked  to  old  and  middle-aged  people 
who  told  me  all  sorts  of  interesting  things  of  "  com 
munity  days,"  looked  through  curious  old-fashioned 
albums  of  photographs,  showing  the  women  in  their 
bloomers  and  cropped  hair,  and  the  men  in  the  ill- 
fitting  frock-coats  of  the  respectable  mediocre  per- 

162 


STATE-BLINDNESS 

son  in  early  Victorian  times.  I  think  that  some  of 
the  reminiscences  I  awakened  had  been  voiceless  for 
some  time.  At  moments  it  was  like  hearing  the 
story  of  a  flattened,  dry,  and  colorless  flower  be 
tween  the  pages  of  a  book,  of  a  verse  written  in 
faded  ink,  or  of  some  daguerreotype  spotted  and 
faint  beyond  recognition.  It  was  extraordinarily 
New  England  in  its  quality  as  I  looked  back  at  it  all. 
They  claimed  a  quiet  perfection  of  soul,  they  search 
ed  one  another  marvellously  for  spiritual  chastening, 
they  defied  custom  and  opinion,  they  followed  their 
reasoning  and  their  theology  to  the  inmost  amaz 
ing  abnegations — and  they  kept  themselves  solvent 
by  the  manufacture  of  steel  traps  that  catch  the 
legs  of  beasts  in  their  strong  and  pitiless  jaws.  .  .  . 
But  this  book  is  not  about  the  things  that  con 
cerned  Oneida  in  community  days,  and  I  mention 
them  here  only  because  of  the  curious  developments 
of  the  present  time.  Years  ago,  when  the  founder, 
John  Humphrey  Noyes,  grew  old  and  unable  to  con 
trol  the  new  dissensions  that  arose  out  of  the  scep 
tical  attitude  of  the  younger  generation  towards  his 
ingenious  theology,  and  such-like  stresses,  commu 
nism  was  abandoned,  the  religious  life  and  services 
discontinued,  the  concern  turned  into  a  joint-stock 
company,  and  the  members  made  shareholders  on 
strictly  commercial  lines.  For  some  years  its 
prosperity  declined.  Many  of  the  members  went 
away.  But  a  nucleus  remained  as  residents  in  the 
old  buildings,  and  after  a  time  there  were  returns. 

163 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

I  was  told  that  in  the  early  days  of  the  new  period 
there  was  a  violent  reaction  against  communistic 
methods,  a  jealous  inexperienced  insistence  upon 
property.  "  It  was  difficult  to  borrow  a  hammer," 
said  one  of  my  informants. 

Then,  as  the  new  generation  began  to  feel  its  feet, 
came  a  fresh  development  of  vitality.  The  Oneida 
company  began  to  set  up  new  machinery,  to  seek 
wider  markets,  to  advertise  and  fight  competitors. 

This  Mr.  P.  B.  Noyes  was  the  leader  into  the  new 
paths.  He  possesses  all  the  force  of  character,  the 
constructive  passion,  the  imaginative  power  of  his 
progenitor,  and  it  has  all  gone  into  business  com 
petition.  I  have  heard  much  talk  of  the  romance 
of  business,  chiefly  from  people  I  heartily  despised, 
but  in  Mr.  Noyes  I  found  business  indeed  romantic. 
It  had  got  hold  of  him,  it  possessed  him  like  a 
passion.  He  has  inspired  all  his  half-brothers  and 
cousins  and  younger  fellow-members  of  the  com 
munity  with  his  own  imaginative  motive.  They, 
too,  are  enthusiasts  for  business. 

Mr.  Noyes  is  a  tall  man,  who  looks  down  when  he 
talks  to  one.  He  showed  me  over  the  associated 
factories,  told  me  how  the  trap  trade  of  all  North 
America  is  in  Oneida 's  hands,  told  me  of  how  they 
fight  and  win  against  the  British  traps  in  South 
America  and  Burmah.  He  showed  me  photographs 
of  panthers  in  traps,  tigers  in  traps,  bears  snarling 
at  death,  unfortunate  deer,  foxes  caught  by  the 
paws.  .  .  . 

164 


STATE-BLINDNESS 

I  did  my  best  to  forget  those  photographs  at  once 
in  the  interest  of  his  admirable  machinery,  which 
busied  itself  with  chain-making  as  though  it  had 
eyes  and  hands.  I  went  beside  him,  full  of  that 
respect  that  a  literary  man  must  needs  feel  when  a 
creative  business  controller  displays  his  quality. 

"But  the  old  religion  of  Oneida?"  I  would  in 
terpolate. 

"  Each  one  of  us  is  free  to  follow  his  own  religion. 
Here  is  a  new  sort  of  chain  we  are  making  for  hang 
ing-lamps.  Hitherto — " 

Presently  I  would  try  again.  "Are  the  workers 
here  in  any  way  members  of  the  community?" 

"Oh  no!  Many  of  them  are  Italian  immigrants. 
We  think  of  building  a  school  for  them.  ...  No,  we 
get  no  labor  troubles.  We  pay  always  above  the 
trade-union  rates,  and  so  we  get  the  pick  of  the 
workmen.  Our  class  of  work  can't  be  sweated."  .  .  . 

Yes,  he  was  an  astonishing  personality,  so  im 
mensely  concentrated  on  these  efficient  manu 
facturing  and  trading  developments,  so  evidently 
careless  of  theology,  philosophy,  social  speculation, 
beauty. 

"Your  father  was  a  philosopher,"  I  said. 

"  I  think  in  ten  years'  time  I  may  give  up  the  con 
trol  here,"  he  threw  out,  "and  write  something." 

"I've  thought  of  the  publishing  trade  myself,"  I 
said,  "when  my  wits  are  old  and  stiff."  .  .  . 

I  never  met  a  man  before  so  firmly  gripped  by  the 
romantic  constructive  and  adventurous  element  of 

165 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

business,  so  little  concerned  about  personal  riches 
or  the  accumulation  of  wealth.  He  illuminated 
much  that  had  been  dark  to  me  in  the  American 
character.  I  think  better  of  business  by  reason  of 
him.  And  time  after  time  I  tried  him  upon  politics. 
It  came  to  nothing.  Making  a  new  world  was,  he 
thought,  a  rhetorical  flourish  about  futile  and 
troublesome  activities,  and  politicians  merely  a  dis 
reputable  sort  of  parasite  upon  honorable  people 
who  made  chains  and  plated  spoons.  All  his  con 
structive  instincts,  all  his  devotion,  were  for  Oncida 
and  its  enterprises.  America  was  just  the  impartial 
space,  the  large  liberty,  in  which  Oneida  grew,  the 
Stars  and  Stripes  a  wide  sanction  akin  to  the  im 
partial  irresponsible  harboring  sky  overhead.  Sense 
of  the  State  had  never  grown  in  him — can  now,  I 
felt  convinced,  never  grow.  .  .  . 

But  some  day,  I  like  to  imagine,  the  World  State, 
and  not  Oneida  corporations,  and  a  nobler  trade 
than  traps,  will  command  such  services  as  his. 


CHAPTER   XI 
TWO  STUDIES   IN  DISAPPOINTMENT 


IN  considering  the  quality  of  the 
American  mind  (upon  which,  as  I  be 
lieve,  the  ultimate  destiny  of  America 
entirely  depends) ,  it  has  been  necessary  to  point  out 
that,  considered  as  one  whole,  it  still  seems  lacking 
in  any  of  that  living  sense  of  the  state  out  of  which 
constructive  effort  must  arise,  and  that,  conse 
quently,  enormous  amounts  of  energy  go  to  waste 
in  anarchistic  and  chaotically  competitive  private 
enterprise.  I  believe  there  are  powerful  forces  at 
work  in  the  trend  of  modern  thought,  science,  and 
method,  in  the  direction  of  bringing  order,  control, 
and  design  into  this  confused  gigantic  conflict,  and 
the  discussion  of  these  constructive  forces  must 
necessarily  form  the  crown  of  my  forecast  of  Amer 
ica's  future.  But  before  I  come  to  that  I  must  deal 
with  certain  American  traits  that  puzzle  me,  that  I 
cannot  completely  explain  to  myself,  that  dash  my 
large  expectations  with  an  obstinate  shadow  of  fore 
boding.  Essentially  these  are  disintegrating  in- 

167 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

fluences,  in  the  nature  of  a  fierce  intolerance,  that 
lead  to  conflicts  and  destroy  co-operation.  One 
makes  one's  criticism  with  compunction.  One 
moves  through  the  American  world,  meeting  con 
stantly  with  kindness  and  hospitality,  with  a  famil 
iar  helpfulness  that  is  delightful,  with  sympathetic 
enterprise  and  energetic  imagination,  and  then  sud 
denly  there  flashes  out  a  quality  of  harshness.  .  .  . 

I  will  explain  in  a  few  minutes  what  I  mean  by 
this  flash  of  harshness.  Let  me  confess  here  that  I 
cannot  determine  whether  it  is  a  necessary  conse 
quence  of  American  conditions,  the  scar  upon  the 
soul  of  too  strenuous  business  competition,  or  whether 
it  is  something  deeper,  some  subtle,  unavoidable 
infection  perhaps  in  this  soil  that  was  once  the  Red 
Indian's  battle-ground,  some  poison,  it  may  be, 
mingled  with  this  clear  exhilarating  air.  And  going 
with  this  harshness  there  seems  also  something  else, 
a  contempt  for  abstract  justice  that  one  does  not 
find  in  any  European  intelligence — not  even  among 
the  English.  This  contempt  may  be  a  correlative 
of  the  intense  practicality  begotten  by  a  scruple- 
destroying  commercial  training.  That,  at  any  rate, 
is  my  own  prepossession.  Conceivably  I  am  over- 
disposed  to  make  that  tall  lady  in  New  York  Harbor 
stand  as  a  symbol  for  the  liberty  of  property,  and  to 
trace  the  indisputable  hastiness  of  life  here — it  is 
haste  sometimes  rather  than  speed, — its  scorn  of 
aesthetic  and  abstract  issues,  this  frequent  quality  of 
harshness,  and  a  certain  public  disorder,  whatever 

168 


TWO   STUDIES   IN    DISAPPOINTMENT 

indeed  mars  the  splendid  promise  and  youth  of 
America,  to  that.  I  think  it  is  an  accident  of  the 
commercial  phase  that  presses  men  beyond  dignity, 
patience,  and  magnanimity.  I  am  loath  to  believe  it 
is  something  fundamentally  American. 

I  have  very  clearly  in  my  memory  the  figure  of 
young  MacQueen,  in  his  gray  prison  clothes  in  Tren 
ton  jail,  and  how  I  talked  with  him.  He  and  Mr. 
Booker  T.  Washington  and  Maxim  Gorky  stand  for 
me  as  figures  in  the  shadow — symbolical  men.  I 
think  of  America  as  pride  and  promise,  as  large 
growth  and  large  courage,  all  set  with  beautiful 
fluttering  bunting,  and  then  my  vision  of  these  three 
men  comes  back  to  me;  they  return  presences  in 
separable  from  my  American  effect,  unlit  and  un 
complaining  on  the  sunless  side  of  her,  implying 
rather  than  voicing  certain  accusations.  America 
can  be  hasty,  can  be  obstinately  thoughtless  and 
unjust.  .  .  . 

Well,  let  me  set  down  as  shortly  as  I  can  how  I 
saw  them,  and  then  go  on  again  with  my  main  thesis. 


ii 

MACQUEEN  is  one  of  those  young  men 
MacQueen      England  is  now  making  by  the  thousand 
in  her  elementary  schools — a  man  of 
that  active,  intelligent,  mentally  hungry,  self -edu 
cating  sort  that  is  giving  us  our  elementary  teach- 

169 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

ers,  our  labor  members,  able  journalists,  authors, 
civil  servants,  and  some  of  the  most  public-spirited 
and  efficient  of  our  municipal  administrators.  He 
is  the  sort  of  man  an  Englishman  grows  prouder  of 
as  he  sees  America  and  something  of  her  politicians 
and  labor  leaders.  After  his  board -school  days 
MacQueen  went  to  work  as  a  painter  and  grainer, 
and  gave  his  spare  energy  to  self -education.  He 
mastered  German,  and  read  widely  and  freely.  He 
corresponded  with  William  Morris,  devoured  Tolstoy 
and  Bernard  Shaw,  followed  the  Clarion  week  by 
week,  discussed  social  questions,  wrote  to  the  news 
papers,  debated,  made  speeches.  The  English  read 
er  will  begin  to  recognize  the  type.  Jail  had  worn 
him  when  I  saw  him,  but  I  should  think  he  was  al 
ways  physically  delicate;  he  wears  spectacles,  he 
warms  emotionally  as  he  talks.  And  he  decided, 
after  much  excogitation,  that  the  ideal  state  is  one 
of  so  fine  a  quality  of  moral  training  that  people  will 
not  need  coercion  and  repressive  laws.  He  calls 
himself  an  anarchist — of  the  early  Christian,  Tols 
toy  an,  non-resisting  school.  Such  an  anarchist  was 
Emerson,  among  other  dead  Americans  whose 
names  are  better  treasured  than  their  thoughts. 
That  sort  of  anarchist  has  as  much  connection  with 
embittered  bomb-throwers  and  assassins  as  Miss 
Florence  Nightingale  has  with  the  woman  Hartmann, 
who  put  on  a  nurse's  uniform  to  poison  and  rob.  .  .  . 
Well,  MacQueen  led  an  active  life  in  England, 
married,  made  a  decent  living,  and  took  an  honor- 

170 


TWO   STUDIES   IN   DISAPPOINTMENT 

able  part  in  the  local  affairs  of  Leeds  until  he  was 
twenty-six.  Then  he  conceived  a  desire  for  wider 
opportunity  than  England  offers  men  of  his  class. 

In  January,  1902,  he  crossed  the  Atlantic,  and, 
no  doubt,  he  came  very  much  aglow  with  the 
American  idea.  He  felt  that  he  was  exchanging  a 
decadent  country  of  dwarfing  social  and  political 
traditions  for  a  land  of  limitless  outlook.  He  became 
a  proof-reader  in  New  York,  and  began  to  seek 
around  him  for  opportunities  of  speaking  and  for 
warding  social  progress.  He  tried  to  float  a  news 
paper.  The  New  York  labor-unions  found  him  a 
useful  speaker,  and,  among  others,  the  German 
silk-workers  of  New  York  became  aware  of  him. 
In  June  they  asked  him  to  go  to  Paterson  to  speak 
in  German  to  the  weavers  in  that  place. 

The  silk-dyers  were  on  strike  in  Paterson,  but  the 
weavers  were  weaving  "scab-silk,"  dyed  by  dyers 
elsewhere,  and  it  was  believed  that  the  dyers'  strike 
would  fail  unless  they  struck  also.  They  had  to  be 
called  out.  They  were  chiefly  Italians,  some  Hun 
garians.  It  was  felt  by  the  New  York  German  silk- 
workers  that  perhaps  MacQueen's  German  learned 
in  England  might  meet  the  linguistic  difficulties  of 
the  case. 

He  went.  I  hope  he  will  forgive  me  if  I  say  that 
his  was  an  extremely  futile  expedition.  He  did  very 
little.  He  wrote  an  entirely  harmless  article  or  so  in 
English  for  La  Questione  Sociale,  and  he  declined 
with  horror  and  publicity  to  appear  upon  the  same 

171 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

platform  with  a  mischievous  and  violent  lady 
anarchist  called  Emma  Goldman.  On  June  17, 
1902,  he  went  to  Paterson  again,  and  spoke  to  his 
own  undoing.  There  is  no  evidence  that  he  said  any 
thing  illegal  or  inflammatory,  there  is  clear  evidence 
that  he  bored  his  audience.  They  shouted  him 
down,  and  called  for  a  prominent  local  speaker  named 
Galiano.  MacQueen  subsided  into  the  background, 
and  Galiano  spoke  for  an  hour  in  Italian.  He 
aroused  great  enthusiasm,  and  the  proceedings  ter 
minated  with  a  destructive  riot. 

Eight  witnesses  testify  to  the  ineffectual  efforts 
on  the  part  of  MacQueen  to  combat  the  violence  in 
progress.  .  .  . 

That  finishes  the  story  of  MacQueen 's  activities 
in  America,  for  which  he  is  now  in  durance  at  Tren 
ton.  He,  in  common  with  a  large  crowd  and  in 
common,  too,  with  nearly  all  the  witnesses  against 
him,  did  commit  one  offence  against  the  law — he  did 
not  go  home  when  destruction  began.  He  was  ar 
rested  next  day.  From  that  time  forth  his  fate  was 
out  of  his  hands,  and  in  the  control  of  a  number  of 
people  who  wanted  to  "make  an  example"  of  the 
Paterson  strikers.  The  press  took  up  MacQueen. 
They  began  to  clothe  the  bare  bones  of  this  simple 
little  history  I  have  told  in  fluent,  unmitigated  lying. 
They  blackened  him,  one  might  think,  out  of  sheer 
artistic  pleasure  in  the  operation.  They  called  this 
rather  nervous,  educated,  nobly  meaning  if  ill- 
advised  young  man  a  "notorious  anarchist";  his 

172 


TWO   STUDIES  IN  DISAPPOINTMENT 

head -line  title  became  "Anarchistic  MacQueen"; 
they  wrote  his  " story"  in  a  vein  of  imaginative 
fervor;  they  invented  "an  unsavory  police  record" 
for  him  in  England;  and  enlarged  upon  the  mar 
vellous  secret  organization  for  crime  of  which  he  was 
representative  and  leader.  In  a  little  while  Mac- 
Queen  had  ceased  to  be  a  credible  human  being ;  he 
might  have  been  invented  by  Mr.  William  le  Queux. 
He  was  arrested — Galiano  went  scot-free — and  re 
leased  on  bail.  It  was  discovered  that  his  pleasant, 
decent  Yorkshire  wife  and  three  children  were 
coming  out  to  America  to  him,  and  she  became  "  the 
woman  Nellie  Barton" — her  maiden  name — and  "a 
socialist  of  the  Emma  Goldman  stripe."  This,  one 
gathers,  is  the  most  horrible  stripe  known  to  Amer 
ican  journalism.  Had  there  been  a  worse  one,  Mrs. 
MacQueen  would  have  been  the  ex  officio.  And  now 
here  is  an  extraordinary  thing — public  officials  began 
to  join  in  the  process.  This  is  what  perplexes  me  most 
in  this  affair.  I  am  told  that  Assistant-Secretary-of- 
the-Treasury  H.  A.  Taylor,  without  a  fact  to  go  upon, 
subscribed  to  the  "unsavory  record"  legend  and 
Assistant-Secretary  C.  H.  Keep  fell  in  with  it.  They 
must  have  seen  what  it  was  they  were  indorsing. 
In  a  letter  from  Mr.  Keep  to  the  Reverend  A.  W. 
Wishart,  of  Trenton  (who  throughout  has  fought 
most  gallantly  for  justice  in  this  case),  I  find  Mr. 
Keep  distinguishes  himself  by  the  artistic  device  of 
putting  "William  MacQueen V  name  in  inverted 
commas.  So,  very  delicately,  he  conveys  out  of  the 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

void  the  insinuation  that  the  name  is  an  alias. 
while  the  Commissioner  of  Immigration  prepared  to 
take  a  hand  in  the  game  of  breaking  up  MacQueen. 
He  stopped  Mrs.  MacQueen  at  the  threshold  of 
liberty,  imprisoned  her  in  Ellis  Island,  and  sent  her 
back  to  Europe.  MacQueen,  still  on  bail,  was  not 
informed  of  this  action,  and  waited  on  the  pier  for 
some  hours  before  he  understood.  His  wife  had 
come  second  class  to  America,  but  she  was  returned 
first  class,  and  the  steamship  company  seized  her 
goods  for  the  return  fare.  .  .  . 

That  was  more  than  MacQueen  could  stand.  He 
had  been  tried,  convicted,  sentenced  to  five  years' 
imprisonment,  and  he  was  now  out  on  bail  pending 
an  appeal.  Anxiety  about  his  wife  and  children  was 
too  much  for  him.  He  slipped  off  to  England  after 
them  ("Escape  of  the  Anarchist  MacQueen"),  made 
what  provision  and  arrangements  he  could  for  them, 
and  returned  in  time  to  save  his  bondsman's  money 
("Capture  of  the  Escaped  Anarchist  MacQueen"). 
Several  members  of  the  Leeds  City  Council  ("  Crim 
inal  Associates  in  Europe")  saw  him  off.  That  was 
in  1903.  His  appeal  had  been  refused  on  a  technical 
point.  He  went  into  Trenton  jail,  and  there  he  is 
to  this  day.  There  I  saw  him.  Trenton  Jail  did  not 
impress  me  as  an  agreeable  place.  The  building  is 
fairly  old,  and  there  is  no  nonsense  about  the  food. 
The  cells  hold,  some  of  them,  four  criminals,  some  of 
them  two,  but  latterly  MacQueen  has  had  spells  in 
the  infirmary,  and  has  managed  to  get  a  cell  to  him- 


TWO   STUDIES   IN   DISAPPOINTMENT 

self.  Many  of  the  criminals  are  negroes  and  half- 
breeds,  imprisoned  for  unspeakable  offences.  In 
the  exercising-yard  MacQueen  likes  to  keep  apart. 
"When  I  first  came  I  used  to  get  in  a  corner,"  he 
said.  .  .  . 

Now  this  case  of  MacQueen  has  exercised  my  mind 
enormously.  It  was  painful  to  go  out  of  the  gray 
jail  again  after  I  had  talked  to  him — of  Shaw  and 
Morris,  of  the  Fabian  Society  and  the  British  labor 
members — into  sunlight  and  freedom,  and  ever  and 
again,  as  I  went  about  New  York  having  the  best 
of  times  among  the  most  agreeable  people,  the  figure 
of  him  would  come  back  to  me  quite  vividly,  in  his 
gray  dress,  sitting  on  the  edge  of  an  unaccustomed 
chair,  hands  on  his  knees,  speaking  a  little  nervously 
and  jerkily,  and  very  glad  indeed  to  see  me.  He  is 
younger  than  myself,  but  much  my  sort  of  man,  and 
we  talked  of  books  and  education  and  his  case  like 
brothers.  There  can  be  no  doubt  to  any  sensible 
person  who  will  look  into  the  story  of  his  conviction, 
who  will  even  go  and  see  him,  that  there  has  been  a 
serious  miscarriage  of  justice. 

There  has  been  a  serious  miscarriage  of  justice, 
such  as  (unhappily)  might  happen  in  any  country. 
That  is  nothing  distinctive  of  America.  But  what 
does  impress  me  as  remarkable  and  perplexing  is  the 
immense  difficulty  —  the  perhaps  unsurmountable 
difficulty — of  getting  this  man  released.  The  Gover 
nor  of  the  State  of  New  Jersey  knows  he  is  innocent, 
the  judges  of  the  Court  of  Pardons  know  he  is  in- 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

nocent.  Three  of  them  I  was  able  to  button-hole  at 
Trenton,  and  hear  their  point  of  view.  Two  are  of 
the  minority  and  for  release,  one  was  doubtful  in 
attitude  but  hostile  in  spirit.  They  hold,  the  man, 
he  thinks,  on  the  score  of  public  policy.  They  put 
it  that  Paterson  is  a  "  hotbed  "  of  crime  and  violence ; 
that  once  MacQueen  is  released  every  anarchist  in 
the  country  will  be  emboldened  to  crime,  and  so  on 
and  so  on.  I  admit  Paterson  festers,  but  if  we  are 
to  punish  anybody  instead  of  reforming  the  system, 
it's  the  masters  who  ought  to  be  in  jail  for  that. 

"What  will  the  property-owners  in  Paterson  say 
to  us  if  this  man  is  released?"  one  of  the  judges  ad 
mitted  frankly. 

"  But  he  hadn't  anything  to  do  with  the  violence," 
I  said,  an  argued  the  case  over  again — quite  missing 
the  point  of  that  objection. 

Whenever  I  had  a  chance  in  New  York,  in  Boston, 
in  Washington,  even  amid  the  conversation  of  a 
Washington  dinner-table,  I  dragged  up  the  case  of 
MacQueen.  Nobody  seemed  indignant.  One  lady 
admitted  the  sentence  was  heavy,  "he  might  have 
been  given  six  months  to  cool  off  in,"  she  said.  I 
protested  he  ought  not  to  have  been  given  a  day. 
"  Why  did  he  go  there  ?"  said  a  Supreme  Court  judge 
in  Washington,  a  lawyer  in  New  York,  and  several 
other  people.  "Wasn't  he  making  trouble?"  I  was 
asked. 

At  last  that  reached  my  sluggish  intelligence. 

Yet  I  still  hesitate  to  accept  the  new  interpreta- 

176 


TWO   STUDIES   IN    DISAPPOINTMENT 

tions.  Galiano,  who  preached  blind  violence  and 
made  the  riot,  got  off  scot-free;  MacQueen,  who 
wanted  a  legitimate  strike  on  British  lines,  went  to 
jail.  So  long  as  the  social  injustice,  the  sweated 
disorder  of  Paterson's  industrialism,  vents  its  cries 
in  Italian  in  La  Questione  Sociale,  so  long  as  it  re 
mains  an  inaudible  misery  so  far  as  the  great  public 
is  concerned,  making  vehement  yet  impotent  ap 
peals  to  mere  force,  and  so  losing  its  last  chances  of 
popular  sympathy,  American  property,  I  gather,  is 
content.  The  masters  and  the  immigrants  can  deal 
with  one  another  on  those  lines.  But  to  have  out 
siders  coming  in! 

There  is  an  active  press  campaign  against  the 
release  of  "the  Anarchist  MacQueen,"  and  I  do  not 
believe  that  Mr.  Wishart  will  succeed  in  his  en 
deavors.  I  think  MacQueen  will  serve  out  his  five 
years. 

The  plain  truth  is  that  no  one  pretends  he  is  in 
jail  on  his  merits;  he  is  in  jail  as  an  example  and 
lesson  to  any  one  who  proposes  to  come  between 
master  and  immigrant  worker  in  Paterson.  He  has 
attacked  the  system.  The  people  who  profit  by  the 
system,  the  people  who  think  things  are  "  all  right  as 
they  are,"  have  hit  back  in  the  most  effectual  way 
they  can,  according  to  their  lights. 

That,  I  think,  accounts  for  the  sustained  quality 
of  the  lying  in  this  case,  and,  indeed,  for  the  whole 
situation.  He  is  in  jail  on  principle  and  without 
personal  animus,  just  as  they  used  to  tar  and  feather 

177 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

the  stray  abolitionist  on  principle  in  Carolina.  The 
policy  of  stringent  discouragement  is  a  reasonable 
one  —  scoundrelly,  no  doubt,  but  understandable. 
And  I  think  I  can  put  myself  sufficiently  into  the 
place  of  the  Paterson  masters,  of  the  Trenton  judges, 
of  those  journalists,  of  those  subordinate  officials  at 
Washington  even,  to  understand  their  motives  and 
inducements.  I  indulge  in  no  self-righteous  pride. 
Simply,  I  thank  Heaven  I  have  not  had  their 
peculiar  temptations. 

But  my  riddle  lies  in  the  attitude  of  the  public — of 
the  American  nation,  which  hasn't,  it  seems,  a  spark 
of  moral  indignation  for  this  sort  of  thing,  which 
indeed  joins  in  quite  cheerfully  against  the  victim. 

It  is  ill  served  by  its  press,  no  doubt,  but  surely  it 
understands.  , 


in 

THEN  I   assisted   at   the   coming   of 
Maxim  Gorky    Maxim  Gorky,  and  witnessed  many  in 
timate  details  of  what  Professor  Gid- 
dings,    that    courageous    publicist,    has    called    his 
"lynching." 

Here,  again,  is  a  case  I  fail  altogether  to  under 
stand.  The  surface  values  of  that  affair  have  a 
touch  of  the  preposterous.  I  set  them  down  in  in 
finite  perplexity. 

My  first  week  in  New  York  was  in  the  period  of 


TWO   STUDIES   IN   DISAPPOINTMENT 

Gorky's  advent.  Expectation  was  at  a  high  pitch, 
and  one  might  have  foretold  a  stupendous,  a  history- 
making  campaign.  The  American  nation  seemed 
concentrated  upon  one  great  and  ennobling  idea,  the 
freedom  of  Russia,  and  upon  Gorky  as  the  embodi 
ment  of  that  idea.  A  protest  was  to  be  made  against 
cruelty  and  violence  and  massacre.  That  great 
figure  of  Liberty  with  the  torch  was  to  make  it  flare 
visibly  half-way  round  the  world,  reproving  tyranny. 
Gorky  arrived,  and  the  eclat  was  immense.  We 
dined  him,  we  lunched  him,  we  were  photographed 
in  his  company  by  flash-light.  I  very  gladly  shared 
that  honor,  for  Gorky  is  not  only  a  great  master  of 
the  art  I  practise,  but  a  splendid  personality.  He  is 
one  of  those  people  to  whom  the  camera  does  no 
justice,  whose  work,  as  I  know  it  in  an  English 
translation,  forceful  as  it  is,  fails  very  largely  to 
convey  his  peculiar  quality.  His  is  a  big,  quiet 
figure;  there  is  a  curious  power  of  appeal  in  his  face, 
a  large  simplicity  in  his  voice  and  gesture.  He  was 
dressed,  when  I  met  him,  in  peasant  clothing,  in  a 
belted  blue  shirt,  trousers  of  some  shiny  black  ma 
terial,  and  boots ;  and  save  for  a  few  common  greet 
ings  he  has  no  other  language  than  Russian.  So  it 
was  necessary  that  he  should  bring  with  him  some 
one  he  could  trust  to  interpret  him  to  the  world. 
And  having,  too,  much  of  the  practical  helplessness 
of  his  type  of  genius,  he  could  not  come  without  his 
right  hand,  that  brave  and  honorable  lady,  Madame 
Andreieva,  who  has  been  now  for  years  in  every- 

179 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

thing  but  the  severest  legal  sense  his  wife.  Russia 
has  no  Dakota;  and  although  his  legal  wife  has 
long  since  found  another  companion,  the  Orthodox 
Church  in  Russia  has  no  divorce  facilities  for  men  in 
the  revolutionary  camp.  So  Madame  Andreieva 
stands  to  him  as  George  Eliot  stood  to  George  Lewes, 
and  I  suppose  the  two  of  them  had  almost  forgotten 
the  technical  illegality  of  their  tie,  until  it  burst  upon 
them  and  the  American  public  in  a  monstrous  storm 
of  exposure. 

It  was  like  a  summer  thunder-storm.  At  one  mo 
ment  Gorky  was  in  an  immense  sunshine,  a  plenipo 
tentiary  from  oppression  to  liberty,  at  the  next  he 
was  being  almost  literally  pelted  through  the  streets. 

I  do  not  know  what  motive  actuated  a  certain 
section  of  the  American  press  to  initiate  this  pelting 
of  Maxim  Gorky.  A  passion  for  moral  purity  may 
perhaps  have  prompted  it,  but  certainly  no  passion 
for  purity  ever  before  begot  so  brazen  and  abundant 
a  torrent  of  lies.  It  was  precisely  the  sort  of  cam 
paign  that  damned  poor  Mac  Queen,  but  this  time 
on  an  altogether  imperial  scale.  The  irregularity 
of  Madame  Andreieva 's  position  was  a  mere  point  of 
departure.  The  journalists  went  on  to  invent  a 
deserted  wife  and  children,  they  declared  Madame 
Andreieva  was  an  "actress,"  and  loaded  her  with 
all  the  unpleasant  implications  of  that  unfortunate 
word;  they  spoke  of  her  generally  as  "the  woman 
Andreieva";  they  called  upon  the  Commissioner  of 
Immigration  to  deport  her  as  a  "female  of  bad 

1 80 


TWO   STUDIES   IN    DISAPPOINTMENT 

character";  quite  influential  people  wrote  to  him 
to  that  effect;  they  published  the  name  of  the  hotel 
that  sheltered  her,  and  organized  a  boycott.  Who 
ever  dared  to  countenance  the  victims  was  de 
nounced.  Professor  Dewar  of  Columbia  had  given 
them  a  reception;  " Dewar  must  go,"  said  the  head 
lines.  Mark  Twain,  who  had  assisted  in  the  great 
welcome,  was  invited  to  recant  and  contribute  un 
friendly  comments.  The  Gorkys  were  pursued  with 
insult  from  hotel  to  hotel.  Hotel  after  hotel  turned 
them  out.  They  found  themselves  at  last,  after  mid 
night,  in  the  streets  of  New  York  city  with  every 
door  closed  against  them.  Infected  persons  could 
not  have  been  treated  more  abominably  in  a  town 
smitten  with  a  panic  of  plague. 

This  change  happened  in  the  course  of  twenty- 
four  hours.  On  one  day  Gorky  was  at  the  zenith, 
on  the  next  he  had  been  swept  from  the  world.  To 
me  it  was  astounding — it  was  terrifying.  I  wanted 
to  talk  to  Gorky  about  it,  to  find  out  the  hidden 
springs  of  this  amazing  change.  I  spent  a  Sunday 
evening  looking  for  him  with  an  ever-deepening 
respect  for  the  power  of  the  American  press.  I  had 
a  quaint  conversation  with  the  clerk  of  the  hotel  in 
Fifth  Avenue  from  which  he  had  first  been  driven. 
Europeans  can  scarcely  hope  to  imagine  the  moral 
altitudes  at  which  American  hotels  are  conducted. 
...  I  went  thence  to  seek  Mr.  Abraham  Cahan  in  the 
East  Side,  and  thence  to  other  people  I  knew,  but  in 
vain.  Gorky  was  obliterated. 

181 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

I  thought  this  affair  was  a  whirlwind  of  foolish  mis 
understanding,  such  as  may  happen  in  any  capital, 
and  that  presently  his  entirely  tolerable  relationship 
would  be  explained.  But  for  all  the  rest  of  my  time 
in  New  York  this  insensate  campaign  went  on. 
There  was  no  attempt  of  any  importance  to  stem  the 
tide,  and  to  this  day  large  sections  of  the  American 
public  must  be  under  the  impression  that  this  great 
writer  is  a  depraved  man  of  pleasure  accompanied  by 
a  favorite  cocotte.  The  writers  of  paragraphs  rack 
ed  their  brains  to  invent  new  and  smart  ways  of  in 
sulting  Madame  Andreieva.  The  chaste  entertainers 
of  the  music-halls  of  the  Tenderloin  district  intro 
duced  allusions.  And  amid  this  riot  of  personali 
ties  Russia  was  forgotten.  The  massacres,  the  chaos 
of  cruelty  and  blundering,  the  tyranny,  the  women 
outraged,  the  children  tortured  and  slain — all  that 
was  forgotten.  In  Boston,  in  Chicago,  it  was  the 
same.  At  the  bare  suggestion  of  Gorky's  coming 
the  same  outbreak  occurred,  the  same  display  of  im 
becile  gross  lying,  the  same  absolute  disregard  of  the 
tragic  cause  he  had  come  to  plead. 

One  gleam  of  comedy  in  this  remarkable  outbreak  I 
recall.  Some  one  in  ineffectual  protest  had  asked 
what  Americans  would  have  said  if  Benjamin 
Franklin  had  encountered  such  ignominies  on  his 
similar  mission  of  appeal  to  Paris  before  the  War  of 
Independence.  "Benjamin  Franklin,"  retorted  one 
bright  young  Chicago  journalist,  "  was  a  man  of  very 
different  moral  character  from  Gorky,"  and  proceed- 

182 


TWO   STUDIES   IN   DISAPPOINTMENT 

ed  to  explain  how  Chicago  was  prepared  to  defend 
the  purity  of  her  homes  against  the  invader.  Ben 
jamin  Franklin,  it  is  true,  was  a  person  of  very  dif 
ferent  morals  from  Gorky — but  I  don't  think  that 
bright  young  man  in  Chicago  had  a  very  sound  idea 
of  where  the  difference  lay. 

I  spent  my  last  evening  on  American  soil  in  the 
hospitable  home  in  Staten  Island  that  sheltered 
Gorky  and  Madame  Andreieva.  After  dinner  we 
sat  together  in  the  deepening  twilight  upon  a  broad 
veranda  that  looks  out  upon  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
views  in  the  world,  upon  serene  large  spaces  of  land 
and  sea,  upon  slopes  of  pleasant,  window-lit,  tree-set 
wooden  houses,  upon  the  glittering  clusters  of  lights, 
and  the  black  and  luminous  shipping  that  comes  and 
goes  about  the  Narrows  and  the  Upper  Bay.  Half 
masked  by  a  hill  contour  to  the  left  was  the  light 
of  the  torch  of  Liberty.  .  .  .  Gorky's  big  form  fell  into 
shadow,  Madame  Andreieva  sat  at  his  feet,  trans 
lating  methodically,  sentence  by  sentence,  into  clear 
French  whatever  he  said,  translating  our  speeches 
into  Russian.  He  told  us  stories — of  the  soul  of  the 
Russian,  of  Russian  religious  sects,  of  kindnesses  and 
cruelties,  of  his  great  despair. 

Ever  and  again,  in  the  pauses,  my  eyes  would  go 
to  where  New  York  far  away  glittered  like  a  brighter 
and  more  numerous  Pleiades. 

I  gauged  something  of  the  real  magnitude  of  this 
one  man's  disappointment,  the  immense  expectation 
of  his  arrival,  the  impossible  dream  of  his  mission 

13  183 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

He  had  come — the  Russian  peasant  in  person,  out  of 
a  terrific  confusion  of  bloodshed,  squalor,  injustice — 
to  tell  America,  the  land  of  light  and  achieved  free 
dom,  of  all  these  evil  things.  She  would  receive 
him,  help  him,  understand  truly  what  he  meant 
with  his  "Rossia."  I  could  imagine  how  he  had 
felt  as  he  came  in  the  big  steamer  to  her,  up  that 
large  converging  display  of  space  and  teeming 
energy.  There  she  glowed  to-night  across  the 
water,  a  queen  among  cities,  as  if  indeed  she  was  the 
light  of  the  world.  Nothing,  I  think,  can  ever  rob 
that  splendid  harbor  approach  of  its  invincible 
quality  of  promise.  .  .  .  And  to  him  she  had  shown 
herself  no  more  than  the  luminous  hive  of  multitudes 
of  base  and  busy,  greedy  and  childish  little  men. 

MacQueen  in  jail,  Gorky  with  his  reputation 
wantonly  bludgeoned  and  flung  aside;  they  are  just 
two  chance  specimens  of  the  myriads  who  have  come 
up  this  great  waterway  bearing  hope  and  gifts. 


CHAPTER  XII 
THE  TRAGEDY  OF  COLOR 


I  SEEM  to  find  the  same  hastiness  and 
HamenJtsdg"  something  of  the  same  note  of  harsh 
ness  that  strike  me  in  the  cases  of  Mac- 
Queen  and  Gorky  in  America's  treatment  of  her 
colored  population.  I  am  aware  how  intricate,  how 
multitudinous,  the  aspects  of  this  enormous  question 
have  become,  but  looking  at  it  in  the  broad  and 
transitory  manner  I  have  proposed  for  myself  in 
these  papers,  it  does  seem  to  present  many  parallel 
elements.  There  is  the  same  disposition  towards  an 
indiscriminating  verdict,  the  same  disregard  of  pro 
portion  as  between  small  evils  and  great  ones,  the 
same  indifference  to  the  fact  that  the  question  does 
not  stand  alone,  but  is  a  part,  and  this  time  a  by  no 
means  small  part,  in  the  working  out  of  America's 
destinies. 

In  regard  to  the  colored  population,  just  as  in 
regard  to  the  great  and  growing  accumulations  of 
unassimilated  and  increasingly  unpopular  Jews,  and 
to  the  great  and  growing  multitudes  of  Roman 

185 


THE   FUTURE    IN   AMERICA 

Catholics  whose  special  education  contradicts  at  so 
many  points  those  conceptions  of  individual  judg 
ment  and  responsibility  upon  which  America  relies, 
I  have  attempted  time  after  time  to  get  some  an 
swer  from  the  Americans  I  have  met  to  what  is  to  me 
the  most  obvious  of  questions.  "  Your  grandchildren 
and  the  grandchildren  of  these  people  will  have  to 
live  in  this  country  side  by  side ;  do  you  propose,  do 
you  believe  it  possible,  that  under  the  increasing 
pressure  of  population  and  competition  they  should 
be  living  then  in  just  the  same  relations  that  you  and 
these  people  are  living  now ;  if  you  do  not,  then  what 
relations  do  you  propose  shall  exist  between  them?" 
It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  I  have  never  once 
had  the  beginnings  of  an  answer  to  this  question. 
Usually  one  is  told  with  great  gravity  that  the 
problem  of  color  is  one  of  the  most  difficult  that  we 
have  to  consider,  and  the  conversation  then  breaks 
up  into  discursive  anecdotes  and  statements  about 
black  people.  One  man  will  dwell  upon  the  un 
controllable  violence  of  a  black  man's  evil  passions 
(in  Jamaica  and  Barbadoes  colored  people  form  an 
overwhelming  proportion  of  the  population,  and 
they  have  behaved  in  an  exemplary  fashion  for  the 
last  thirty  years) ;  another  will  dilate  upon  the  in 
credible  stupidity  of  the  full-blooded  negro  (during 
my  stay  in  New  York  the  prize  for  oratory  at 
Columbia  University,  oratory  which  was  the  one 
redeeming  charm  of  Daniel  Webster,  was  awarded 
to  a  Zulu  of  unmitigated  blackness) ;  a  third  will 

186 


THE   TRAGEDY   OF   COLOR 

speak  of  his  physical  offensiveness,  his  peculiar  smell 
which  necessitates  his  social  isolation  (most  well-to- 
do  Southerners  are  brought  up  by  negro  "mam 
mies");  others,  again,  will  enter  upon  the  painful 
history  of  the  years  that  followed  the  war,  though  it 
seems  a  foolish  thing  to  let  those  wrongs  of  the  past 
dominate  the  outlook  for  the  future.  And  one 
charming  Southern  lady  expressed  the  attitude  of 
mind  of  a  whole  class  very  completely,  I  think, 
when  she  said,  "  You  have  to  be  one  of  us  to  feel  this 
question  at  all  as  it  ought  to  be  felt." 

There,  I  think,  I  got  something  tangible.  These 
emotions  are  a  cult. 

My  globe-trotting  impudence  will  seem,  no  doubt, 
to  mount  to  its  zenith  when  I  declare  that  hardly 
any  Americans  at  all  seem  to  be  in  possession  of  the 
elementary  facts  in  relation  to  this  question.  These 
broad  facts  are  not  taught,  as  of  course  they  ought 
to  be  taught,  in  school;  and  what  each  man  knows 
is  picked  up  by  the  accidents  of  his  own  untrained 
observation,  by  conversation  always  tinctured  by 
personal  prejudice,  by  hastily  read  newspapers  and 
magazine  articles  and  the  like.  The  quality  of  this 
discussion  is  very  variable,  but  on  the  whole  pretty 
low.  While  I  was  in  New  York  opinion  was  greatly 
swayed  by  an  article  in,  if  I  remember  rightly,  the 
Century  Magazine,  by  a  gentleman  who  had  deduced 
from  a  few  weeks'  observation  in  the  slums  of 
Khartoum  the  entire  incapacity  of  the  negro  to  es 
tablish  a  civilization  of  his  own.  He  never  had, 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

therefore  he  never  could;  a  discouraging  ratiocina 
tion.  We  English,  a  century  or  so  ago,  said  all  these 
things  of  the  native  Irish.  If  there  is  any  trend  of 
opinion  at  all  in  this  matter  at  present,  it  lies  in  the 
direction  of  a  generous  decision  on  the  part  of  the 
North  and  West  to  leave  the  black  more  and  more  to 
the  judgment  and  mercy  of  the  white  people  with 
whom  he  is  locally  associated.  This  judgment  and 
mercy  points,  on  the  whole,  to  an  accentuation  of  the 
colored  man's  natural  inferiority,  to  the  cessation  of 
any  other  educational  attempts  than  those  that  in 
crease  his  industrial  usefulness  (it  is  already  illegal 
in  Louisiana  to  educate  him  above  a  contemptible 
level),  to  his  industrial  exploitation  through  usury 
and  legal  chicanery,  and  to  a  systematic  strengthen 
ing  of  the  social  barriers  between  colored  people  of 
whatever  shade  and  the  whites. 

Meanwhile,  in  this  state  of  general  confusion,  in 
the  absence  of  any  determining  rules  or  assumptions, 
all  sorts  of  things  are  happening — according  to  the 
accidents  of  local  feeling.  In  Massachusetts  you 
have  people  with,  I  am  afraid,  an  increasing  sense 
of  sacrifice  to  principle,  lunching  and  dining  with 
people  of  color.  They  do  it  less  than  they  did,  I 
was  told.  Massachusetts  stands,  I  believe,  at  the 
top  of  the  scale  of  tolerant  humanity.  One  seems 
to  reach  the  bottom  at  Springfield,  Missouri,  which 
is  a  county  seat  with  a  college,  an  academy,  a  high 
school,  and  a  zoological  garden.  There  the  exem 
plary  method  reaches  the  nadir.  Last  April  three 

1 88 


THE   TRAGEDY   OF  COLOR 

unfortunate  negroes  were  burned  to  death,  apparently 
because  they  were  negroes,  and  as  a  general  corrective 
of  impertinence.  They  seem  to  have  been  innocent 
of  any  particular  offence.  It  was  a  sort  of  racial 
sacrament.  The  edified  Sunday-school  children  hur 
ried  from  their  gospel-teaching  to  search  for  souve 
nirs  among  the  ashes,  and  competed  with  great  spirit 
for  a  fragment  of  charred  skull. 

It  is  true  that  in  this  latter  case  Governor  Folk 
acted  with  vigor  and  justice,  and  that  the  better 
element  of  Springfield  society  was  evidently  shocked 
when  it  was  found  that  quite  innocent  negroes  had 
been  used  in  these  instructive  pyrotechnics ;  but  the 
fact  remains  that  a  large  and  numerically  important 
section  of  the  American  public  does  think  that 
fierce  and  cruel  reprisals  are  a  necessary  part  of  the 
system  of  relationships  between  white  and  colored 
man.  In  our  dispersed  British  community  we  have 
almost  exactly  the  same  range  between  our  better 
attitudes  and  our  worse — I'm  making  no  claim  of 
national  superiority.  In  London,  perhaps,  we  out 
do  Massachusetts  in  liberality;  in  the  National 
Liberal  Club  or  the  Reform  a  black  man  meets  all  the 
courtesies  of  humanity — as  though  there  was  no 
such  thing  as  color.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
Cape  won't  bear  looking  into  for  a  moment.  The 
same  conditions  give  the  same  results;  a  half- 
educated  white  population  of  British  or  Dutch  or 
German  ingredients  greedy  for  gain,  ill  controlled  and 
feebly  influenced,  in  contact  with  a  black  population, 

189 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

is  bound  to  reproduce  the  same  brutal  and  stupid 
aggressions,  the  same  half -honest  prejudices  to 
justify  those  aggressions,  the  same  ugly,  mean 
excuses.  "Things  are  better  in  Jamaica  and  Bar- 
badoes,"  said  I,  in  a  moment  of  patriotic  weakness, 
to  Mr.  Booker  T.  Washington. 

"Eh!"  said  he,  and  thought  in  that  long  silent 
way  he  has.  .  .  .  "They're  worse  in  South  Africa- 
much.  Here  we've  got  a  sort  of  light.  We  know 
generally  what  we've  got  to  stand..  There— 

His  words  sent  my  memory  back  to  some  con 
versations  I  had  quite  recently  with  a  man  from  a 
dry-goods  store  in  Johannesburg.  He  gave  me 
clearly  enough  the  attitude  of  the  common  white  out 
there;  the  dull  prejudice;  the  readiness  to  take  ad 
vantage  of  the  "boy";  the  utter  disrespect  for 
colored  womankind;  the  savage,  intolerant  resent 
ment,  dashed  dangerously  with  fear,  which  the  native 
arouses  in  him.  (Think  of  all  that  must  have  hap 
pened  in  wrongful  practice  and  wrongful  law  and 
neglected  educational  possibilities  before  our  Zulus 
in  Natal  were  goaded  to  face  massacre,  spear  against 
rifle !)  The  rare  and  culminating  result  of  education 
and  experience  is  to  enable  men  to  grasp  facts,  to 
balance  justly  among  their  fluctuating  and  innumer 
able  aspects,  and  only  a  small  minority  in  our  world 
is  educated  to  that  pitch.  Ignorant  people  can 
think  only  in  types  and  abstractions,  can  achieve 
only  emphatic  absolute  decisions,  and  when  the 
commonplace  American  or  the  commonplace  colonial 

190 


THE   TRAGEDY   OF   COLOR 

Briton  sets  to  work  to  "  think  over  "  the  negro  prob 
lem,  he  instantly  banishes  most  of  the  material 
evidence  from  his  mind — clears  for  action,  as  it  were. 
He  forgets  the  genial  carriage  of  the  ordinary  colored 
man,  his  beaming  face,  his  kindly  eye,  his  rich,  jolly 
voice,  his  touching  and  trusted  friendliness,  his 
amiable,  unprejudiced  readiness  to  serve  and  follow 
a  white  man  who  seems  to  know  what  he  is  doing. 
He  forgets — perhaps  he  has  never  seen — the  dear 
humanity  of  these  people,  their  slightly  exaggerated 
vanity,  their  innocent  and  delightful  love  of  color 
and  song,  their  immense  capacity  for  affection,  the 
warm  romantic  touch  in  their  imaginations.  He 
ignores  the  real  fineness  of  the  indolence  that  de 
spises  servile  toil,  of  the  carelessness  that  disdains  the 
watchful  aggressive  economies,  day  by  day,  now  a 
wretched  little  gain  here  and  now  a  wretched  little 
gain  there,  that  make  the  dirty  fortune  of  the  Rus 
sian  Jews  who  prey  upon  color  in  the  Carolinas.  No ; 
in  the  place  of  all  these  tolerable  every-day  ex 
periences  he  lets  his  imagination  go  to  work  upon  a 
monster,  the  "real  nigger." 

"  Ah!  You  don't  know  the  real  nigger,"  said  one 
American  to  me  when  I  praised  the  colored  people  I 
had  seen.  "You  should  see  the  buck  nigger  down 
South,  Congo  brand.  Then  you'd  understand,  sir." 

His  voice,  his  face  had  a  gleam  of  passionate 
animosity. 

One  could  see  he  had  been  brooding  himself  out 
of  all  relations  to  reality  in  this  matter.  He  was  a 

191 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

man  beyond  reason  or  pity.  He  was  obsessed. 
Hatred  of  that  imaginary  diabolical  "buck  nigger" 
blackened  his  soul.  It  was  no  good  to  talk  to  him 
of  the  "buck  American,  Packingtown  brand,"  or  the 
"buck  Englishman,  suburban  race-meeting  type," 
and  to  ask  him  if  these  intensely  disagreeable  persons 
justified  outrages  on  Senator  Lodge,  let  us  say,  or 
Mrs.  Longworth.  No  reply  would  have  come  from 
him.  "You  don't  understand  the  question,"  he 
would  have  answered.  "You  don't  know  how  we 
Southerners  feel." 
Well,  one  can  make  a  tolerable  guess. 


ii 

I  CERTAINLY  did  not  begin  to  realize 
Thstrainite  one  most  important  aspect  of  this 
question  until  I  reached  America.  I 
thought  of  those  eight  millions  as  of  men,  black  as 
ink.  But  when  I  met  Mr.  Booker  T.  Washington, 
for  example,  I  met  a  man  certainly  as  white  in  ap 
pearance  as  our  Admiral  Fisher,  who  is,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  quite  white.  A  very  large  proportion  of 
these  colored  people,  indeed,  is  more  than  half  white. 
One  hears  a  good  deal  about  the  high  social  origins 
of  the  Southern  planters,  very  many  derive  indispu 
tably  from  the  first  families  of  England.  It  is  the 
same  blood  flows  in  these  mixed  colored  people's 
veins.  Just  think  of  the  sublime  absurdity,  there 
fore,  of  the  ban.  There  are  gentlemen  of  education 

192 


THE   TRAGEDY   OF   COLOR 

and  refinement,  qualified  lawyers  and  doctors,  whose 
ancestors  assisted  in  the  Norman  Conquest,  and  they 
dare  not  enter  a  car  marked  "white"  and  intrude 
upon  the  dignity  of  the  rising  loan-monger  from 
Esthonia.  For  them  the  "Jim  Crow"  car.  .  .  . 

One  tries  to  put  that  aspect  to  the  American  in 
vain.  "These  people,"  you  say,  "are  nearer  your 
blood,  nearer  your  temper,  than  any  of  those  bright- 
eyed,  ringleted  immigrants  on  the  East  Side.  Are 
you  ashamed  of  your  poor  relations?  Even  if  you 
don't  like  the  half,  or  the  quarter  of  negro  blood, 
you  might  deal  civilly  with  the  three-quarters  white. 
It  doesn't  say  much  for  your  faith  in  your  own 
racial  prepotency,  anyhow. "... 

The  answer  to  that  is  usually  in  terms  of  mania. 

"Let  me  tell  you  a  little  story  just  to  illustrate," 
said  one  deponent  to  me  in  an  impressive  under 
tone — "  just  to  illustrate,  you  know.  ...  A  few  years 
ago  a  young  fellow  came  to  Boston  from  New  Orleans. 
Looked  all  right.  Dark — but  he  explained  that  by 
an  Italian  grandmother.  Touch  of  French  in  him, 
too.  Popular.  Well,  he  made  advances  to  a  Boston 
girl — good  family.  Gave  a  fairly  straight  account  of 
himself.  Married." 

He  paused.     "Course  of  time — offspring.     Little 


son." 


His  eye  made  me  feel  what  was  coming. 
"Was  it  by  any  chance  very,   very  black?"   I 
whispered. 

"Yes,  sir.     Black!     Black  as  your  hat.     Abso- 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

lutely  negroid.  Projecting  jaw,  thick  lips,  frizzy 
hair,  flat  nose — everything.  .  .  . 

"  But  consider  the  mother's  feelings,  sir,  consider 
that!  A  pure-minded,  pure  white  woman!" 

What  can  one  say  to  a  story  of  this  sort,  when  the 
taint  in  the  blood  surges  up  so  powerfully  as  to  black 
en  the  child  at  birth  beyond  even  the  habit  of  the 
pure-blooded  negro  ?  What  can  you  do  with  a  pub 
lic  opinion  made  of  this  class  of  ingredient?  And 
this  story  of  the  lamentable  results  of  intermarriage 
was  used,  not  as  an  argument  against  intermarriage, 
but  as  an  argument  against  the  extension  of  quite 
rudimentary  civilities  to  the  men  of  color.  "  If  you 
eat  with  them,  you've  got  to  marry  them,"  he  said, 
an  entirely  fabulous  post-prandial  responsibility. 

It  is  to  the  tainted  whites  my  sympathies  go  out. 
The  black  or  mainly  black  people  seem  to  be  fairly 
content  with  their  inferiority;  one  sees  them  all 
about  the  States  as  waiters,  cab  -  drivers,  railway 
porters,  car  attendants,  laborers  of  various  sorts,  a 
pleasant,  smiling,  acquiescent  folk.  But  consider  the 
case  of  a  man  with  a  broader  brain  than  such  small 
uses  need,  conscious,  perhaps,  of  exceptional  gifts, 
capable  of  wide  interests  and  sustained  attempts, 
who  is  perhaps  as  English  as  you  or  I,  with  just  a 
touch  of  color  in  his  eyes,  in  his  lips,  in  his  finger 
nails,  and  in  his  imagination.  Think  of  the  ac 
cumulating  sense  of  injustice  he  must  bear  with  him 
through  life,  the  perpetual  slight  and  insult  he  must 
undergo  from  all  that  is  vulgar  and  brutal  among  the 

194 


THE   TRAGEDY   OF   COLOR 

whites!  Something  of  that  one  may  read  in  the 
sorrowful  pages  of  Du  Bois's  The  Souls  of  Black  Folk. 
They  would  have  made  Alexandre  Dumas  travel  in 
the  Jim  Crow  car  if  he  had  come  to  Virginia.  But  I 
can  imagine  some  sort  of  protest  on  the  part  of  that 
admirable  but  extravagant  man.  .  .  .  They  even  talk 
of  "  Jim  Crow  elevators"  now  in  Southern  hotels. 

At  Hull  House,  in  Chicago,  I  was  present  at  a 
conference  of  colored  people — Miss  Jane  Addams 
efficiently  in  control — to  consider  the  coming  of  a 
vexatious  play,  "The  Clansman,"  which  seems  to 
have  been  written  and  produced  entirely  to  exacer 
bate  racial  feeling.  Both  men  and  women  were 
present,  business  people,  professional  men,  and  their 
wives ;  the  speaking  was  clear,  temperate,  and  won 
derfully  to  the  point,  high  above  the  level  of  any 
British  town  council  I  have  ever  attended.  One 
lady  would  have  stood  out  as  capable  and  charming 
in  any  sort  of  public  discussion  in  England — though 
we  are  not  wanting  in  good  women  speakers — and 
she  was  at  least  three-quarters  black.  .  .  . 

And  while  I  was  in  Chicago,  too,  I  went  to  the 
Peking  Theatre  —  a  "coon"  music-hall  —  and  saw 
something  of  a  lowrer  level  of  colored  life.  The 
common  white,  I  must  explain,  delights  in  calling 
colored  people  "coons,"  and  the  negro,  so  far  as  I 
could  learn,  uses  no  retaliatory  word.  It  was  a 
"variety"  entertainment,  with  one  turn,  at  least, 
of  quite  distinguished  merit,  good-humored  and 
brisk  throughout.  I  watched  keenly,  and  I  could 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

detect  nothing  of  that  trail  of  base  suggestion  one 
would  find  as  a  matter  of  course  in  a  music-hall  in 
such  English  towns  as  Brighton  and  Portsmouth. 
What  one  heard  of  kissing  and  love-making  was 
quite  artless  and  simple  indeed.  The  negro,  it 
seemed  to  me,  did  this  sort  of  thing  with  a  better 
grace  and  a  better  temper  than  a  Londoner,  and 
shows,  I  think,  a  finer  self-respect.  He  thinks  more 
of  deportment,  he  bears  himself  more  elegantly  by 
far  than  the  white  at  the  same  social  level.  The 
audience  reminded  me  of  the  sort  of  gathering  one 
would  find  in  a  theatre  in  Camden  Town  or  Hoxton. 
There  were  a  number  of  family  groups,  the  girls 
brightly  dressed,  and  young  couples  quite  of  the 
London  music-hall  type.  Clothing  ran  "smart," 
but  not  smarter  than  it  would  be  among  fairly  pros 
perous  north  London  Jews.  There  was  no  gallery 
• — socially — no  collection  of  orange-eating,  interrupt 
ing  hooligans  at  all.  Nobody  seemed  cross,  nobody 
seemed  present  for  vicious  purposes,  and  everybody 
was  sober.  Indeed,  there  and  elsewhere  I  took  and 
confirmed  a  mighty  liking  to  these  gentle,  human, 
dark-skinned  people. 


in 

BUT  whatever  aspect  I  recall  of  this 
taboo   that    shows    no   signs   of 
lifting,    of   this   great   problem   of   the 
future  that  America  in  her  haste,  her  indiscriminat- 

196 


THE   TRAGEDY   OF   COLOR 

ing  prejudice,  her  lack  of  any  sustained  study  and 
teaching  of  the  broad  issues  she  must  decide,  com 
plicates  and  intensifies,  and  makes  threatening, 
there  presently  comes  back  to  mind  the  browned 
face  of  Mr.  Booker  T.  Washington,  as  he  talked  to 
me  over  our  lunch  in  Boston. 

He  has  a  face  rather  Irish  in  type,  and  the  soft 
slow  negro  voice.  He  met  my  regard  with  the 
brown  sorrowful  eyes  of  his  race.  He  wanted  very 
much  that  I  should  hear  him  make  a  speech,  because 
then  his  words  came  better;  he  talked,  he  implied, 
with  a  certain  difficulty.  But  I  preferred  to  have 
his  talking,  and  get  not  the  orator — every  one  tells 
me  he  is  an  altogether  great  orator  in  this  country 
where  oratory  is  still  esteemed — but  the  man. 

He  answered  my  questions  meditatively.  I  want 
ed  to  know  with  an  active  pertinacity.  What 
struck  me  most  was  the  way  in  which  his  sense  of  the 
overpowering  forces  of  race  prejudice  weighs  upon 
him.  It  is  a  thing  he  accepts ;  in  our  time  and  condi 
tions  it  is  not  to  be  fought  about.  He  makes  one 
feel  with  an  exaggerated  intensity  (though  I  could 
not  even  draw  him  to  admit)  its  monstrous  injustice. 
He  makes  no  accusations.  He  is  for  taking  it  as  a 
part  of  the  present  fate  of  his  "people,"  and  for 
doing  all  that  can  be  done  for  them  within  the  limit 
it  sets. 

Therein  he  differs  from  Du  Bois,  the  other  great 
spokesman  color  has  found  in  our  time.  Du  Bois, 
is  more  of  the  artist,  less  of  the  statesman;  he  con- 

197 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

ceals  his  passionate  resentment  all  too  thinly.  He 
batters  himself  into  rhetoric  against  these  walls. 
He  will  not  repudiate  the  clear  right  of  the  black 
man  to  every  educational  facility,  to  equal  citizen 
ship,  and  equal  respect.  But  Mr.  Washington  has 
statecraft.  He  looks  before  and  after,  and  plans  and 
keeps  his  counsel  with  the  scope  and  range  of  a 
statesman.  I  use  "statesman"  in  its  highest  sense; 
his  is  a  mind  that  can  grasp  the  situation  and  des 
tinies  of  a  people.  After  I  had  talked- to  him  I  went 
back  to  my  club,  and  found  there  an  English  news 
paper  with  a  report  of  the  opening  debate  upon  Mr. 
Birrell's  Education  Bill.  It  was  like  turning  from 
the  discussion  of  life  and  death  to  a  dispute  about 
the  dregs  in  the  bottom  of  a  tea-cup  somebody  had 
neglected  to  wash  up  in  Victorian  times. 

I  argued  strongly  against  the  view  he  seems  to 
hold  that  black  and  white  might  live  without 
mingling  and  without  injustice,  side  by  side.  That 
I  do  not  believe.  Racial  differences  seem  to  me  al 
ways  to  exasperate  intercourse  unless  people  have 
been  elaborately  trained  to  ignore  them.  Uned 
ucated  men  are  as  bad  as  cattle  in  persecuting  all 
that  is  different  among  themselves.  The  most 
miserable  and  disorderly  countries  of  the  world  are 
the  countries  where  two  races,  two  inadequate 
cultures,  keep  a  jarring,  continuous  separation. 
"You  must  repudiate  separation,"  I  said.  "No 
peoples  have  ever  yet  endured  the  tension  of  inter 
mingled  distinctness . ' ' 

198 


.  HE   TRAGEDY  OF   COLOR 

"May  we  not  become  a  peculiar  people — like  the 
Jews?"  he  suggested.  "Isn't  that  possible?" 

But  there  I  could  not  agree  with  him.  I  thought 
of  the  dreadful  history  of  the  Jews  and  Armenians. 
And  the  negro  cannot  do  what  the  Jews  and  Ar 
menians  have  done.  The  colored  people  of  America 
are  of  a  different  quality  from  the  Jew  altogether, 
more  genial,  more  careless,  more  sympathetic, 
franker,  less  intellectual,  less  acquisitive,  less  wary 
and  restrained — in  a  word,  more  Occidental.  They 
have  no  common  religion  and  culture,  no  conceit  of 
race  to  hold  them  together.  The  Jews  make  a 
ghetto  for  themselves  wherever  they  go;  no  law  but 
their  own  solidarity  has  given  America  the  East  Side. 
The  colored  people  are  ready  to  disperse  and  inter 
breed,  are  not  a  community  at  all  in  the  Jewish 
sense,  but  outcasts  from  a  community.  They  are 
the  victims  of  a  prejudice  that  has  to  be  destroyed. 
These  things  I  urged,  but  it  was,  I  think,  empty 
speech  to  my  hearer.  I  could  talk  lightly  of  de 
stroying  that  prejudice,  but  he  knew  better.  It  is 
the  central  fact  of  his  life,  a  law  of  his  being.  He  has 
shaped  all  his  projects  and  policy  upon  that.  Ex 
clusion  is  inevitable.  So  he  dreams  of  a  colored  race 
of  decent  and  inaggressive  men  silently  giving  the 
lie  to  all  the  legend  of  their  degradation.  They  will 
have  their  own  doctors,  their  own  lawyers,  their  own 
capitalists,  their  own  banks — because  the  whites 
desire  it  so.  But  will  the  uneducated  whites  endure 
even  so  submissive  a  vindication  as  that  ?  Will  they 

14  IQ9 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

suffer  the  horrid  spectacle  of  free  and  self -satisfied 
negroes  in  decent  clothing  on  any  terms  without 
resentment  ? 

He  explained  how  at  the  Tuskegee  Institute  they 
make  useful  men,  skilled  engineers,  skilled  agri 
culturalists,  men  to  live  down  the  charge  of  practical 
incompetence,  of  ignorant  and  slovenly  farming  and 
house  management.  .  .  . 

"I  wish  you  would  tell  me/'  I  said,  abruptly, 
"just  what  you  think  of  the  attitude  of  white 
America  towards  you.  Do  you  think  it  is  generous  ? ' ' 

He  regarded  me  for  a  moment.  "No  end  of 
people  help  us,"  he  said. 

"Yes,"  I  said;  "but  the  ordinary  man.  Is  he 
fair?" 

"Some  things  are  not  fair,"  he  said,  leaving  the 
general  question  alone.  "  It  isn't  fair  to  refuse  a 
colored  man  a  berth  on  a  sleeping-car.  I?  —  I 
happen  to  be  a  privileged  person,  they  make  an 
exception  for  me ;  but  the  ordinary  educated  colored 
man  isn't  admitted  to  a  sleeping-car  at  all.  If  he 
has  to  go  a  long  journey,  he  has  to  sit  up  all  night. 
His  white  competitor  sleeps.  Then  in  some  places, 
in  the  hotels  and  restaurants —  It's  all  right  here 
in  Boston — but  southwardly  he  can't  get  proper  re 
freshments.  All  that's  a  handicap.  .  .  . 

"The  remedy  lies  in  education,"  he  said;  "ours — 
and  theirs. 

"The  real  thing,"  he  told  me,  "isn't  to  be  done  by 
talking  and  agitation.  It's  a  matter  of  lives.  The 

200 


THE   TRAGEDY   OF   COLOR 

only  answer  to  it  all  is  for  colored  men  to  be  patient, 
to  make  themselves  competent,  to  do  good  work,  to 
live  well,  to  give  no  occasion  against  us.  We  feel 
that.  In  a  way  it's  an  inspiration.  .  .  . 

"  There  is  a  man  here  in  Boston,  a  negro,  who  owns 
and  runs  some  big  stores,  employs  all  sorts  of  people, 
deals  justly.  That  man  has  done  more  good  for  our 
people  than  all  the  eloquence  or  argument  in  the 
world.  .  .  .  That  is  what  we  have  to  do — it  is  all  we 
can  do/'  .  .  . 

Whatever  America  has  to  sho\v  in  heroic  living  to 
day,  I  doubt  if  she  can  show  anything  finer  than  the 
quality  of  the  resolve,  the  steadfast  effort  hundreds 
of  black  and  colored  men  are  making  to-day  to  live 
blamelessly,  honorably,  and  patiently,  getting  for 
themselves  what  scraps  of  refinement,  learning,  and 
beauty  they  may,  keeping  their  hold  on  a  civilization 
they  are  grudged  and  denied.  They  do  it  not  for 
themselves  only,  but  for  all  their  race.  Each 
educated  colored  man  is  an  ambassador  to  civiliza 
tion.  They  know  they  have  a  handicap,  that  they 
are  not  exceptionally  brilliant  nor  clever  people. 
Yet  every  such  man  stands,  one  likes  to  think,  aware 
of  his  representative  and  vicarious  character,  fight 
ing  against  foul  imaginations,  misrepresentations, 
injustice,  insult,  and  the  naive  unspeakable  mean 
nesses  of  base  antagonists.  Every  one  of  them  who 
keeps  decent  and  honorable  does  a  little  to  beat 
that  opposition  down. 

But  the  patience  the  negro  needs!     He  may  not 

201 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

even  look  contempt.  He  must  admit  superiority  in 
those  whose  daily  conduct  to  him  is  the  clearest 
evidence  of  moral  inferiority.  We  sympathetic 
whites,  indeed,  may  claim  honor  for  him;  if  he  is  wise 
he  will  be  silent  under  our  advocacy.  He  must  go 
to  and  fro  self -controlled,  bereft  of  all  the  equalities 
that  the  great  flag  of  America  proclaims — that  flag 
for  whose  united  empire  his  people  fought  and  died, 
giving  place  and  precedence  to  the  strangers  who 
pour  in  to  share  its  beneficence,  strangers  ignorant 
even  of  its  tongue.  That  he  must  do — and  wait. 
The  Welsh,  the  Irish,  the  Poles,  the  white  South,  the 
indefatigable  Jews  may  cherish  grievances  and  rail 
aloud.  He  must  keep  still.  They  may  be  hysterical 
revengeful,  threatening,  and  perverse;  their  wrongs 
excuse  them.  F^r  him  there  is  no  excuse.  And  of 
all  the  races  upon  earth,  which  has  suffered  such 
wrongs  as  this  negro  blood  that  is  still  imputed  to 
him  as  a  sin?  These  people  who  disdain  him,  who 
have  no  sense  of  reparation  towards  him,  have 
sinned  against  him  beyond  all  measure.  .  .  . 

No,  I  can't  help  idealizing  the  dark  submissive 
figure  of  the  negro  in  this  spectacle  of  America.  He, 
too,  seems  to  me  to  sit  waiting — and  waiting  with 
a  marvellous  and  simple-minded  patience — for  finer 
understandings  and  a  nobler  time. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
THE  MIND  OF  A  MODERN  STATE 


I  DO  not  know  if  I  am  conveying  to 
Recapitulatory  any  extent  the  picture  of  America  as  I 
see  it,  the  vast  rich  various  continent, 
the  gigantic  energetic  process  of  development,  the 
acquisitive  successes,  the  striving  failures,  the  multi 
tudes  of  those  rising  and  falling  who  come  between, 
all  set  in  a  texture  of  spacious  countryside,  animate 
with  pleasant  timber  homes,  of  clangorous  towns 
that  bristle  to  the  skies,  of  great  exploitation  dis 
tricts  and  crowded  factories,  of  wide  deserts  and 
mine-torn  mountains,  and  huge  half -tamed  rivers. 
I  have  tried  to  make  the  note  of  immigration  grow 
slowly  to  a  dominating  significance  in  this  panorama, 
and  with  that,  to  make  more  and  more  evident  my 
sense  of  the  need  of  a  creative  assimilation,  the  cry 
for  synthetic  effort,  lest  all  this  great  being,  this 
splendid  promise  of  a  new  world,  should  decay  into 
a  vast  unprogressive  stagnation  of  unhappiness  and 
disorder.  I  have  hinted  at  failures  and  cruelties,  I 
have  put  into  the  accumulating  details  of  my  vision, 

203 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

children  America  blights,  men  she  crushes,  fine 
hopes  she  disappoints  and  destroys.  I  have  found 
a  place  for  the  questioning  figure  of  the  South,  the 
sorrowful  interrogation  of  the  outcast  colored  people. 
These  are  but  the  marginal  shadows  of  a  process  in 
its  totality  magnificent,  but  they  exist,  they  go  on 
to  mingle  in  her  destinies. 

Then  I  have  tried  to  show,  too,  the  conception  I 
have  formed  of  the  great  skein  of  industrial  com 
petition  that  has  been  tightening  and  becoming 
more  and  more  involved  through  all  this  century- 
long  age,  the  age  of  blind  growth,  that  draws  now 
towards  its  end;  until  the  process  threatens  to 
throttle  individual  freedom  and  individual  enter 
prise  altogether.  And  of  a  great  mental  uneasiness 
and  discontent,  unprecedented  in  the  history  of  the 
American  mind,  that  promises  in  the  near  future 
some  general  and  conscious  endeavor  to  arrest  this 
unanticipated  strangulation  of  freedom  and  free 
living,  some  widespread  struggle,  of  I  know  not  what 
constructive  power,  with  the  stains  and  disorders 
and  indignities  that  oppress  and  grow  larger  in  the 
national  consciousness.  I  perceive  more  and  more 
that  in  coming  to  America  I  have  chanced  upon  a 
time  of  peculiar  significance.  The  note  of  dis 
illusionment  sounds  everywhere.  America,  for  the 
first  time  in  her  history,  is  taking  thought  about 
herself,  and  ridding  herself  of  long-cherished  illusions. 
I  have  already  mentioned  (in  Chapter  VIII.)  the 
memorable  literature  of  self-examination  that  has 

204 


THE   MIND   OF  A   MODERN   STATE 

come  into  being  during  the  last  decade.  Hitherto 
American  thought  has  been  extraordinarily  localized ; 
there  has  been  no  national  press,  in  the  sense  that 
the  press  of  London  or  Paris  is  national.  Americans 
knew  of  America  as  a  whole,  mainly  as  the  flag. 
Beneath  the  flag  America  is  lost  among  constituent 
States  and  cities.  All  her  newspapers  have  been,  by 
English  standards,  "local"  papers,  preoccupied  by 
local  affairs,  and  taking  an  intensely  localized  point 
of  view.  A  national  newspaper  for  America  would 
be  altogether  too  immense  an  enterprise.  Only 
since  1896,  and  in  the  form  of  weekly  and  monthly 
ten-cent  magazines,  have  the  rudiments  of  a  national 
medium  of  expression  appeared,  and  appeared  to 
voice  strange  pregnant  doubts.  I  had  an  interest 
ing  talk  with  Mr.  Brisben  Walker  upon  this  new 
development.  To  him  the  first  ten-cent  magazine, 
The  Cosmopolitan,  was  due,  and  he  was  naturally 
glad  to  tell  me  of  the  growth  of  this  vehicle.  To-day 
there  is  an  aggregate  circulation  of  ten  millions  of 
these  magazines;  they  supply  fiction,  no  doubt,  and 
much  of  light  interesting  ephemeral  matter,  but  not 
one  of  them  is  without  its  element  of  grave  public 
discussion.  I  do  not  wish  to  make  too  much  of  this 
particular  development,  but  regard  it  as  a  sign  of 
new  interests,  of  keen  curiosities. 

Now  I  must  confess  when  I  consider  this  ocean  of 
readers  I  find  the  fears  I  have  expressed  of  some 
analogical  development  of  American  affairs  towards 
the  stagnant  commercialism  of  China,  or  towards  a 

205 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

plutocratic  imperialism  and  decadence  of  the  Roman 
type,  look  singularly  flimsy.  Upon  its  present  lines, 
and  supposing  there  were  no  new  sources  of  mental 
supply  and  energy,  I  do  firmly  believe  that  America 
might  conceivably  come  more  and  more  under  the 
control  of  a  tacitly  organized  and  exhausting  plutoc 
racy,  be  swamped  by  a  swelling  tide  of  ignorant  and 
unassimilable  labor  immigrants,  decline  towards 
violence  and  social  misery,  fall  behind  Europe  in 
education  and  intelligence,  and  cease  to  lead  civiliza 
tion.  In  such  a  decay  Cassarism  would  be  a  most 
probable  and  natural  phase,  Cassarism  and  a  split 
ting  into  contending  Cassarisms.  Come  but  a  little 
sinking  from  intelligence  towards  coarseness  and 
passion,  and  the  South  will  yet  endeavor  to  impose 
servitude  anew  upon  its  colored  people,  or  secede — 
that  trouble  is  not  yet  over.  A  little  darkening  and 
improverishment  of  outlook  and  New  York  would 
split  from  New  England,  and  Colorado  from  the 
East.  An  illiterate,  short-sighted  America  would 
be  America  doomed.  But  America  is  not  illiterate; 
there  are  these  great  unprecedented  reservoirs  of 
intelligence  and  understanding,  these  millions  of 
people  who  follow  the  process  with  an  increasing 
comprehension.  It  is  these  millions  of  readers 
who  make  the  American  problem,  and  the  problem 
of  Europe  and  the  world  to-day,  unique  and  in 
calculable,  who  provide  a  cohesive  and  reasonable 
and  pacifying  medium  the  Old  World  did  not 
know. 

206 


THE   MIND   OF  A   MODERN   STATE 

II 

You  see,  my  hero  in  the  confused 
fdrama  of  human  life  is  intelligence;  in- 
telligence  inspired  by  constructive  pas 
sion.  There  is  a  demi-god  imprisoned  in  mankind. 
All  human  history  presents  itself  to  me  as  the  un 
conscious  or  half-unconscious  struggle  of  human 
thought  to  emerge  from  the  sightless  interplay  of 
instinct,  individual  passion,  prejudice,  and  ignorance. 
One  sees  this  diviner  element  groping  after  law  and 
order  and  fine  arrangement,  like  a  thing  blind  and 
half -buried,  in  ancient  Egypt,  in  ancient  Judaea,  in 
ancient  Greece.  It  embodies  its  purpose  in  religions, 
invents  the  disciplines  of  morality,  the  reminders  of 
ritual.  It  loses  itself  and  becomes  confused.  It 
wearies  and  rests.  In  Plato,  for  the  first  time,  one 
discovers  it  conscious  and  open-eyed,  trying,  indeed, 
to  take  hold  of  life  and  control  it.  Then  it  goes 
undei,  and  becomes  again  a  convulsive  struggle,  an 
inco-ordinated  gripping  and  leaving,  a  muttering  of 
literature  and  art,  until  the  coming  of  our  own  times. 
Most  painful  and  blundering  of  demi-gods  it  seems 
through  all  that  space  of  years,  with  closed  eyes  and 
feverish  effort.  And  now  again  it  is  clear  to  the 
minds  of  many  men  that  they  may  lay  hold  upon 
and  control  the  destiny  of  their  kind.  .  .  . 

It  is  strange,  it  is  often  grotesque  to  mark  how  the 
reviving  racial  consciousness  finds  expression  to-day. 
Now  it  startles  itself  into  a  new  phase  of  self- 

207 


THE   FUTURE   IN    AMERICA 

knowledge  by  striking  a  note  from  this  art,  and  now 
by  striking  one  from  that.  It  breaks  out  in  fiction 
that  is  ostensibly  written  only  to  amuse,  it  creeps 
into  after-dinner  discussions,  and  invades  a  press 
wrhich  is  economically  no  more  than  a  system  of  ad 
vertisement  sheets  proclaiming  the  price  of  the  thing 
that  is.  Presently  it  is  on  the  stage ;  the  music-hall 
even  is  not  safe  from  it.  Youths  walk  in  the  streets 
to-day,  talking  together  of  things  that  were  once  the 
ultimate  speculation  of  philosophy.  I  am  no  con- 
temner  of  the  present.  To  me  it  appears  a  time  of 
immense  and  wonderful  beginnings.  New  ideas  are 
organizing  themselves  out  of  the  little  limited  efforts 
of  innumerable  men.  Never  was  there  an  age  so 
intellectually  prolific  and  abundant  as  this  in  the 
aggregate  is.  It  is  true,  indeed,  that  we  who  write 
and  think  and  investigate  to-day,  present  nothing 
to  compare  with  the  magnificent  reputations  and  in 
tensely  individualized  achievements  of  the  impres 
sive  personalities  of  the  past.  None  the  less  is  it 
true  that  taken  all  together  we  signifiy  infinitely 
more.  We  no  longer  pose  ourselves  for  admiration, 
high  priests  and  princes  of  letters  in  a  world  of  finite 
achievement;  we  admit  ourselves  no  more  than 
pages  bearing  the  train  of  a  Queen — but  a  Queen  of 
limitless  power.  The  knowledge  we  co-ordinate,  the 
ideas  we  build  together,  the  growing  blaze  in  which 
we  are  willingly  consumed,  are  wider  and  higher  and 
richer  in  promise  than  anything  the  world  has  had 
before.  .  .  . 

208 


THE   MIND   OF   A   MODERN   STATE 

When  one  takes  count  of  the  forces  of  intelligence 
upon  which  we  may  rely  in  the  great  conflict  against 
matter,  brute  instinct,  and  individualistic  disorder, 
to  make  the  new  social  state,  when  we  consider  the 
organizing  forms  that  emerge  already  from  the 
general  vague  confusion,  we  find  apparent  in  every 
modern  state  three  chief  series  of  developments. 
There  is  first  the  thinking  and  investigatory  elements 
that  grow  constantly  more  important  in  our  uni 
versity  life,  the  enlarging  recognition  of  the  need  of  a 
systematic  issue  of  university  publications,  books, 
periodicals,  and  of  sustained  and  fertilizing  discus 
sion.  Then  there  is  the  greater,  cruder,  and  bolder 
sea  of  mental  activities  outside  academic  limits,  the 
amateurs,  the  free  lances  of  thought  and  inquiry, 
the  writers  and  artists,  the  innumerable  ill -dis 
ciplined,  untrained,  but  interested  and  well-meaning 
people  who  write  and  talk.  They  find  their  medium 
in  contemporary  literature,  in  journalism,  in  or 
ganizations  for  the  propaganda  of  opinion.  And, 
thirdly,  there  is  the  immense,  nearly  universally 
diffused  system  of  education  which,  inadequately 
enough,  serves  to  spread  the  new  ideas  as  they  are 
elaborated,  which  does,  at  any  rate  by  its  pre 
paratory  work,  render  them  accessible.  All  these 
new  manifestations  of  mind  embody  themselves 
in  material  forms,  in  class-rooms  and  labora 
tories,  in  libraries,  and  a  vast  machinery  of 
book  and  newspaper  production  and  distribu 
tion. 

209 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

Consider  the  new  universities  that  spring  up  all 
over  America.  Almost  imperceptibly  throughout 
the  past  century,  little  by  little,  the  conception  of  a 
university  has  changed,  until  now  it  is  nearly  al 
together  changed.  The  old-time  university  was  a 
collection  of  learned  men;  it  believed  that  all  the 
generalizations  had  been  made,  all  the  fundamental 
things  said;  it  had  no  vistas  towards  the  future;  it 
existed  for  teaching  and  exercises,  and  more  than 
half  implied  what  Dr.  Johnson,  for  example,  be 
lieved,  that  secular  degeneration  was  the  rule  of 
human  life.  All  that,  you  know,  has  gone;  every 
university,  even  Oxford  (though,  poor  pretentious 
dear,  she  still  professes  to  read  and  think  metaphysics 
in  "the  original"  Greek)  admits  the  conception  of  a 
philosophy  that  progresses,  that  broadens  and  in 
tensifies,  age  by  age.  But  to  come  to  America  is  to 
come  to  a  country  far  more  alive  to  the  thinking 
and  knowledge-making  function  of  universities  than 
Great  Britain.  One  splendidly  endowed  founda 
tion,  the  Johns  Hopkins  University,  Baltimore, 
exists  only  for  research,  and  that  was  the  first  inten 
tion  of  Chicago  University  also.  In  sociology,  in 
pedagogics,  in  social  psychology,  these  vital  sciences 
for  the  modern  state,  America  is  producing  an 
amount  of  work  which,  however  trivial  in  pro 
portion  to  the  task  before  her,  is  at  any  rate 
immense  in  comparison  with  our  own  British  out 
put.  .  .  . 


210 


THE   MIND   OF   A   MODERN   STATE 

in 

I  DID  my  amateurish  and  transitory 

Colv?rs!tyUni"  best  to  see  something  of  the  Ameri 
can  universities.  There  was  Columbia. 
Thither  I  went  with  a  letter  to  Professor  Giddings, 
whose  sociological  writings  are  world  famous.  I 
found  him  busy  with  a  secretary  in  a  business-like 
little  room,  stowed  away  somewhere  under  the  dome 
of  the  magnificent  building  of  the  university  library. 
He  took  me  round  the  opulent  spaces,  the  fine 
buildings  of  Columbia.  ...  I  suppose  it  is  inevitable 
that  a  visitor  should  see  the  constituents  of  a  uni 
versity  out  of  proportion,  but  I  came  away  with 
an  impression  overwhelmingly  architectural.  The 
library  dome,  I  confess,  was  fine,  and  the  desks  below 
well  filled  with  students,  the  books  were  abundant, 
well  arranged,  and  well  tended.  But  I  recall  marble 
staircases,  I  recall  great  wastes  of  marble  steps,  I 
recall,  in  particular,  students'  baths  of  extraordinary 
splendor,  and  I  do  not  recall  anything  like  an  equiva 
lent  effect  of  large  leisure  and  dignity  for  intellectual 
men.  Professor  Giddings  seemed  driven  and  busy, 
the  few  men  I  met  there  appeared  all  to  have  a  lot  of 
immediate  work  to  do.  It  occurred  to  me  in  Colum 
bia,  as  it  occurred  to  me  later  in  the  University 
of  Chicago,  that  the  disposition  of  the  university 
founder  is  altogether  too  much  towards  buildings  and 
memorial  inscriptions,  and  all  too  little  towards  the 
more  difficult  and  far  more  valuable  end  of  putting 

211 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

men  of  pre-eminent  ability  into  positions  of  stimulat 
ed  leisure.  This  is  not  a  distinctly  American  effect. 
In  Oxford,  just  as  much  as  in  Columbia,  nay,  far 
more !  you  find  stone  and  student  lording  it  over  the 
creative  mental  thing;  the  dons  go  about  like  some 
sort  of  little  short-coated  parasite,  pointing  respect 
fully  to  tower  and  facade,  which  have,  in  truth,  no 
reason  for  existing  except  to  shelter  them.  Columbia 
is  almost  as  badly  off  for  means  of  publication  as 
Oxford,  and  quite  as  poor  in  inducements  towards 
creative  work.  Professors  talk  in  an  altogether 
British  way  of  getting  work  done  in  the  vaca 
tion. 

Moreover,  there  was  an  effect  of  remoteness  about 
Columbia.  It  may  have  been  the  quality  of  a  blue 
still  morning  of  sunshine  that  invaded  my  impres 
sion.  I  came  up  out  of  the  crowded  tumult  of  New 
York  to  it,  with  a  sense  of  the  hooting,  hurrying 
traffics  of  the  wide  harbor,  the  teeming  East  Side, 
the  glitter  of  spending,  the  rush  of  finance,  the  whole 
headlong  process  of  America,  behind  me.  I  came 
out  of  the  subway  station  into  wide  still  streets.  It 
was  very  spacious,  very  dignified,  very  quiet.  Well, 
I  want  the  universities  of  the  modern  state  to  be 
more  aggressive.  I  want  to  think  of  a  Columbia 
University  of  a  less  detached  appearance,  even  if  she 
is  less  splendidly  clad.  I  want  to  think  of  her  as 
sitting  up  there,  cheek  on  hand,  with  knitted  brows, 
brooding  upon  the  millions  below.  I  want  to  think 
of  all  the  best  minds  conceivable  going  to  and  fro — 

212 


THE   MIND   OF   A   MODERN    STATE 

thoughts  and  purposes  in  her  organized  mind.    And 
when  she  speaks  that  busy  world  should  listen.  .  .  . 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  much  of  that  busy  world  still 
regards  a  professor  as  something  between  a  dealer  in 
scientific  magic  and  a  crank,  and  a  university  as  an 
institution  every  good  American  should  be  honestly 
proud  of  and  avoid. 


IV 


HARVARD,  too,  is  detached,  though 
Harvard  not  quite  with  the  same  immediacy  of 
contrast.  Harvard  reminded  me  very 
much  of  my  first  impressions  of  Oxford.  One  was 
taken  about  in  the  same  way  to  see  this  or  that  point 
of  view.  Much  of  Harvard  is  Georgian  red  brick, 
that  must  have  seemed  very  ripe  and  venerable  until 
a  year  or  so  ago  one  bitter  winter  killed  all  the 
English  ivy.  There  are  students'  clubs,  after  the 
fashion  of  the  Oxford  Union,  but  finer  and  better 
equipped;  there  is  an  amazing  Germanic  museum, 
the  gift  of  the  present  Emperor,  that  does,  in  a  con 
centrated  form,  present  all  that  is  flamboyant  of 
Germany;  there  are  noble  museums  and  libraries, 
and  very  many  fine  and  dignified  aspects  and  spaces, 
and  an  abundant  intellectual  life.  Harvard  is  hap 
pily  free  from  the  collegiate  politics  that  absorb 
most  of  the  surplus  mental  energy  of  Oxford  and 
Cambridge,  and  the  professors  can  and  do  meet  and 
talk.  At  Harvard  men  count.  I  was  condoled  with 

213 


THE   FUTURE    IN   AMERICA 

on  all  hands  in  my  disappointment  that  I  could 
not  meet  Professor  William  James — he  was  still  in 
California — and  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  meet  and 
talk  to  President  Eliot,  who  is,  indeed,  a  very 
considerable  voice  in  American  affairs.  To  me  he 
talked  quite  readily  and  frankly  of  a  very  living  sub 
ject,  the  integrity  of  the  press  in  relation  to  the 
systematic  and  successful  efforts  of  the  advertising 
chemists  and  druggists  to  stifle  exposures  of  noxious 
proprietary  articles.  He  saw  the  problem  as  the 
subtle  play  of  group  psychology  it  is ;  there  was  none 
of  that  feeble  horror  of  these  troubles  as  "  modern  and 
vulgar"  that  one  would  expect  in  an  English  uni 
versity  leader.  I  fell  into  a  great  respect  for  his  lean 
fine  face  and  figure,  his  deliberate  voice,  his  open, 
balanced,  and  constructive  mind.  He  was  the  first 
man  I  had  met  who  had  any  suggestion  of  a  force  and 
quality  that  might  stand  up  to  and  prevail  against 
the  forces  of  acquisition  and  brute  trading.  He  bore 
himself  as  though  some  sure  power  were  behind  him, 
unlike  many  other  men  I  met  who  criticised  abuses 
abusively,  or  in  the  key  of  facetious  despair.  He 
had  very  much  of  that  fine  aristocratic  quality  one 
finds  cropping  up  so  frequently  among  Americans  of 
old  tradition,  an  aristocratic  quality  that  is  free  from 
either  privilege  or  pretension.  .  .  . 

At  Harvard,  too,  I  met  Professor  Munsterberg, 
one  of  the  few  writers  of  standing  who  have  attempt 
ed  a  general  review  of  the  American  situation.  He 
is  a  tall  fair  German,  but  newly  annexed  to  America, 

214 


,  :  m 


HARVARD  HALL  AND  THE  JOHXSOX  GATE,  CAMBRIDGE 


THE   MIND   OF   A   MODERN   STATE 

with  a  certain  diplomatic  quality  in  his  personality, 
standing  almost  consciously,  as  it  were,  for  Germany 
in  America,  and  for  America  in  Germany.  He  has 
written  a  book  for  either  people,  because  hitherto 
they  have  seen  each  other  too  much  through  Eng 
lish  media  ("von  Englischen  linseln  retouchiert ") , 
and  he  has  done  much  to  spread  the  conception  of  a 
common  quality  and  sympathy  between  Germany 
and  America.  "  Blood,"  he  says  in  this  connection, 
"is  thicker  than  water,  but  .  .  .  printer's  ink  is 
thicker  than  blood."  England  is  too  aristocratic, 
France  too  shockingly  immoral,  Russia  too  absolutist 
to  be  the  sympathetic  and  similar  friend  of  America, 
and  so,  by  a  process  of  exhaustion,  Germany  remains 
the  one  power  on  earth  capable  of  an  "inner  under 
standing."  (Also  he  has  drawn  an  alluring  paral 
lel  between  President  Roosevelt  and  the  Emperor 
William  to  complete  the  approximation  of  "die 
beiden  Edelnationen ") .  I  had  read  all  this,  and 
was  interested  to  encounter  him  therefore  at  a 
Harvard  table  in  a  circle  of  his  colleagues,  agreeable 
and  courteous,  and  still  scarcely  more  assimilated 
than  the  brightly  new  white  Germanic  museum 
among  the  red  brick  traditions  of  Kirkland  and 
Cambridge  streets.  .  .  . 

Harvard  impresses  me  altogether  as  a  very  living 
factor  in  the  present  American  outlook,  not  only 
when  I  was  in  Cambridge,  but  in  the  way  the  place 
tells  in  New  York,  in  Chicago,  in  Washington.  It 
has  a  living  and  contemporary  attitude,  and  it  is 
is  215 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

becoming  more  and  more  audible.  Harvard  opinion 
influences  the  magazines  and  affects  the  press,  at 
least  in  the  East,  to  an  increasing  extent.  It  may, 
in  the  near  future,  become  still  more  rapidly  audible. 
Professor  Eliot  is  now  full  of  years  and  honor,  and  I 
found  in  New  York,  in  Boston,  in  Washington,  that 
his  successor  was  being  discussed.  In  all  these 
cities  I  met  people  disposed  to  believe  that  if  Presi 
dent  Roosevelt  does  not  become  President  of  the 
United  States  for  a  further  term,  he  may  succeed 
President  Eliot.  Now  that  I  have  seen  President 
Roosevelt  it  seems  to  me  that  this  might  have  a  most 
extraordinary  effect  in  accelerating  the  reaction 
upon  the  people  of  America  of  the  best  and  least 
mercenary  of  their  national  thought.  Already  he  is 
exerting  an  immense  influence  in  the  advertisement 
of  new  ideas  and  ideals.  But  of  President  Roosevelt 
I  shall  write  more  fully  later.  .  .  . 


CHICAGO  UNIVERSITY,  too,  is  a  splen- 
"  did  Place  of  fine  buildings  and  green 
spaces  and  trees,  with  a  great  going  to 
and  fro  of  students,  a  wonderful  contrast  to  the  dark 
congestions  of  the  mercantile  city  to  the  north.  To 
all  the  disorganization  of  that  it  is  even  physically 
antagonistic,  and  I  could  think  as  I  went  about  it 
that  already  this  new  organization  has  produced  such 

216 


A     BIT    OF    PRINCETON    UNIVERSITY 


THE   MIND   OF   A   MODERN    STATE 

writing  as  Veblen's  admirable  ironies  (The  Theory 
of  Business  Enterprise,  for  example),  and  such 
sociological  work  as  that  of  Zueblin  and  Albion 
Small.  I  went  through  the  vigorous  and  admirably 
equipped  pedagogic  department,  which  is  evidently  a 
centre  of  thought  and  stimulus  for  the  whole  teach 
ing  profession  of  Illinois ;  I  saw  a  library  of  sociology 
and  economics  beyond  anything  that  London  can 
boast ;  I  came  upon  little  groups  of  students  working 
amid  piles  of  books  in  a  businesslike  manner,  and 
if  at  times  in  other  sections  this  suggestion  was  still 
insistent  that  thought  was  as  yet  only  "moving  in" 
and,  as  it  were,  getting  the  carpets  down,  it  was 
equally  clear  that  thought  was  going  to  live  freely 
and  spaciously,  to  an  unprecedented  extent,  so  soon 
as  things  were  in  order. 

I  visited  only  these  three  great  foundations,  each 
in  its  materially  embodiment  already  larger,  wealth 
ier,  and  more  hopeful  than  any  contemporary 
British  institution,  and  it  required  an  effort  to 
realize  that  they  were  but  a  portion  of  the  embattled 
universities  of  America,  that  I  had  not  seen  Yale  nor 
Princeton  nor  Cornell  nor  Leland  Stanford  nor  any 
Western  State  university,  not  a  tithe,  indeed,  of 
America's  drilling  levies  in  the  coming  war  of  thought 
against  chaos.  I  am  in  no  way  equipped  to  estimate 
the  value  of  the  drilling;  I  have  been  unable  to  get 
any  conception  how  far  these  tens  of  thousands  of 
students  in  these  institutions  are  really  alive  in 
tellectually,  are  really  inquiring,  discussing,  reading, 

217 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

and  criticising ;  I  have  no  doubt  the  great  numbers  of 
them  spend  many  hours  after  the  fashion  of  one 
roomful  I  saw  intent  upon  a  blackboard  covered 
with  Greek;  but  allowing  the  utmost  for  indolence, 
games,  distractions,  and  waste  of  time  and  energy 
upon  unfruitful  and  obsolete  studies,  the  fact  of  this 
great  increasing  proportion  of  minds  at  least  a  little 
trained  in  things  immaterial,  a  little  exercised  in  the 
critical  habit,  remains  a  fact  to  put  over  against  that 
million  and  a  half  child  workers  who  can  barely  have 
learned  to  read — the  other  side,  the  redeeming  side 
of  the  American  prospect. 


VI 

I  AM  impressed  by  the  evident  con- 
A  ^coraeii°m  sciousness  of  the  American  universities 
of  the  r61e  they  have  to  play  in  Amer 
ica's  future.  They  seem  to  me  pervaded  by  the 
constructive  spirit.  They  are  intelligently  antag 
onistic  to  lethargic  and  self-indulgent  traditions,  to 
disorder,  and  disorderly  institutions.  It  is  from  the 
universities  that  the  deliberate  invasion  of  the 
political  machine  by  independent  men  of  honor  and 
position — of  whom  President  Roosevelt  is  the  type 
and  chief  —  proceeds.  Mr.  George  lies  has  called 
my  attention  to  a  remarkable  address  made  so  long 
ago  as  the  year  1883  before  the  Yale  Alumni,  by 
President  Andrew  D.  White  (the  first  president),  of 

218 


THE   MIND   OF   A   MODERN   STATE 

Cornell,  who  was  afterwards  American  Ambassador 
at  St.  Petersburg  and  Berlin.  President  White  was 
a  member  of  the  class  of  '53,  and  he  addressed  him 
self  particularly  to  the  men  of  that  year.  His  title 
was  "The  Message  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  to  the 
Twentieth,"  and  it  is  full  of  a  spirit  that  grows  and 
spreads  throughout  American  life,  that  may  ulti 
mately  spread  throughout  the  life  of  the  whole  na 
tion,  a  spirit  of  criticism  and  constructive  effort,  of 
a  scope  and  quality  the  world  has  never  seen  before. 
The  new  class  of  '83  are  the  messengers. 

"To  a  few  tottering  old  men  of  our  dear  class  of 
'53  it  will  be  granted  to  look  with  straining  eyes  over 
the  boundary  into  the  twentieth  century;  but  even 
these  can  do  little  to  make  themselves  heard  then. 
Most  of  us  shall  not  see  it.  But  before  us  and 
around  us ;  nay,  in  our  own  families  are  the  men  who 
shall  see  it.  The  men  who  go  forth  from  these  dear 
shades  to-morrow  are  girding  themselves  for  it. 
Often  as  I  have  stood  in  the  presence  of  such  bands 
of  youthful  messengers  I  have  never  been  able  to 
resist  a  feeling  of  awe,  as  in  my  boyhood  when  I 
stood  before  men  who  were  soon  to  see  Palestine  and 
the  Far  East,  or  the  Golden  Gates  of  the  West,  and 
the  islands  of  the  Pacific.  The  old  story  of  St. 
Fillipo  Neri  at  Rome  comes  back  to  me,  who,  in  the 
days  of  the  Elizabethan  persecutions,  made  men 
bring  him  out  into  the  open  air  and  set  him  oppo 
site  the  door  of  the  Papal  College  of  Rome,  that  he 
might  look  into  the  faces  of  the  English  students, 

219 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

destined  to  go  forth  to  triumph  or  to  martyrdom  foi 
the  faith  in  far-off,  heretic  England." 

I  cannot  forbear  from  quoting  further  from  this 
address;  it  is  all  so  congenial  to  my  own  beliefs. 
Indeed,  I  like  to  think  of  that  gathering  of  young 
men  and  old  as  if  it  were  still  existing,  as  though  the 
old  fellows  of  '53  were  still  sitting  listening  and  look 
ing  up  responsive  to  this  appeal  that  comes  down 
to  us.  I  fancy  President  White  on  the  platform 
before  them,  a  little  figure  in  the  perspective  of  a 
quarter  of  a  century,  but  still  quite  clearly  audible, 
delivering  his  periods  to  that  now  indistinguishable 
audience : 

"  What,  then,  is  to  be  done  ?  Mercantilism,  neces 
sitated  at  first  by  our  circumstances  and  position, 
has  been  in  the  main  a  great  blessing.  It  has  been 
so  under  a  simple  law  of  history.  How  shall  it  be 
prevented  from  becoming  in  obedience  to  a  similar 
inexorable  law,  a  curse? 

''Here,  in  the  answer  to  this  question,  it  seems  to 
me,  is  the  most  important  message  from  this  century 
to  the  next. 

"For  the  great  thing  to  be  done  is  neither  more 
nor  less  than  to  develop  other  great  elements  of 
civilization  now  held  in  check,  which  shall  take  their 
rightful  place  in  the  United  States,  which  shall 
modify  the  mercantile  spirit,  .  .  .  which  shall  make 
the  history  of  our  country  something  greater  and 
broader  than  anything  we  have  reached,  or  ever  can 
reach,  under  the  sway  of  mercantilism  alone. 

220 


THE   MIND   OF  A   MODERN   STATE 

"  What  shall  be  those  counter  elements  of  civiliza 
tion?  Monarchy,  aristocracy,  militarism  we  could 
not  have  if  we  would,  we  would  not  have  if  we  could. 
What  shall  we  have  ? 

"  I  answer  simply  that  we  must  do  all  that  we 
can  to  rear  greater  fabrics  of  religious,  philosophic 
thought,  literary  thought,  scientific,  artistic,  political 
thought  to  summon  young  men  more  and  more  into 
these  fields,  not  as  a  matter  of  taste  or  social  op 
portunity,  but  as  a  patriotic  duty;  to  hold  before 
them  not  the  incentive  of  mere  gain  or  of  mere 
pleasure  or  of  mere  reputation,  but  the  ideal  of  a 
new  and  higher  civilization.  The  greatest  work 
which  the  coming  century  has  to  do  in  this  country 
is  to  build  up  an  aristocracy  of  thought  and  feeling 
which  shall  hold  its  own  against  the  aristocracy  of 
mercantilism.  I  would  have  more  and  more  the 
appeal  made  to  every  young  man  who  feels  within 
him  the  ability  to  do  good  or  great  things  in  any  of 
these  higher  fields,  to  devote  his  powers  to  them  as  a 
sacred  duty,  no  matter  how  strongly  the  mercantile 
or  business  spirit  may  draw  him.  I  would  have  the 
idea  preached  early  and  late.  .  .  . 

"And  as  the  guardian  of  such  a  movement,  ...  I 
would  strengthen  at  every  point  this  venerable  uni 
versity,  and  others  like  it  throughout  the  country. 
Remiss,  indeed,  have  the  graduates  and  friends  of 
our  own  honored  Yale  been  in  their  treatment  of  her. 
She  has  never  had  the  means  to  do  a  tithe  of  what 
she  might  do.  She  ought  to  be  made  strong  enough, 

221 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

with  more  departments,  more  professors,  more 
fellowships,  to  become  one  of  a  series  of  great  rally 
ing  points  or  fortresses,  and  to  hold  always  con 
centrated  here  a  strong  army,  ever  active  against 
mercantilism,  materialism,  and  Philistinism.  .  .  . 

"But,  after  all,  the  effort  to  create  these  new 
counterpoising,  modifying  elements  of  a  greater 
civilization  must  be  begun  in  the  individual  man, 
and  especially  in  the  youth  who  feels  within  himself 
the  power  to  think,  the  power  to  write,  the  power  to 
carve  the  marble,  to  paint,  to  leave  something  be 
hind  him  better  than  dollars.  In  the  individual 
minds  and  hearts  and  souls  of  the  messengers  who 
are  preparing  for  the  next  century  is  a  source  of 
regeneration.  They  must  form  an  ideal  of  religion 
higher  than  that  of  a  life  devoted  to  grasping  and 
grinding  and  griping,  with  a  whine  for  mercy  at  the 
end  of  it.  They  must  form  an  ideal  of  science  higher 
than  that  of  increasing  the  production  of  iron  or 
cotton.  They  must  form  an  ideal  of  literature  and 
of  art  higher  than  that  of  pandering  to  the  latest 
prejudice  or  whimsey.  And  they  must  form  an 
ideal  of  man  himself  worthy  of  that  century  into 
which  are  to  be  poured  the  accumulations  of  this. 
So  shall  material  elements  be  brought  to  their  proper 
place,  made  stronger  for  good,  made  harmless  for 
evil.  So  shall  we  have  that  development  of  new  and 
greater  elements,  that  balance  of  principles  which 
shall  make  this  republic  greater  than  anything  of 
which  we  now  can  dream." 

222 


CHAPTER   XIV 
CULTURE 


YET  even  as  I  write  of  the  universi- 
as  ^ie  central  intellectual  organ  of  a 
modern  state,  as  I  sit  implying  salvation 
by  schools,  there  comes  into  my  mind  a  mass  of 
qualification.  The  devil  in  the  American  world 
drama  may  be  mercantilism,  ensnaring,  tempting, 
battling  against  my  hero,  the  creative  mind  of  man, 
but  mercantilism  is  not  the  only  antagonist.  In 
Fifth  Avenue  or  Paterson  one  may  find  nothing  but 
the  zenith  and  nadir  of  the  dollar  hunt,  at  a  Harvard 
table  one  may  encounter  nothing  but  living  minds, 
but  in  Boston  —  I  mean  not  only  Beacon  Street  and 
Commonwealth  Avenue,  but  that  Boston  of  the 
mind  and  heart  that  pervades  American  refinement 
and  goes  about  the  world  —  one  finds  the  human 
mind  not  base,  nor  brutal,  nor  stupid,  nor  ignorant, 
but  mysteriously  enchanting  and  ineffectual,  so 
that  having  eyes  it  yet  does  not  see,  having  powers 
it  achieves  nothing.  .  .  . 

I  remember  Boston  as  a  quiet  effect,  as  something 
a  little  withdrawn,  as  a  place  standing  aside  from  the 

221 


THE   FUTURE   IN  AMERICA 

throbbing  interchange  of  East  and  West.  When  I 
hear  the  word  Boston  now  it  is  that  quality  returns. 
I  do  not  think  of  the  spreading  parkways  of  Mr. 
Woodbury  and  Mr.  Olmstead  nor  of  the  crowded 
harbor;  the  congested  tenement-house  regions,  full 
of  those  aliens  whose  tongues  struck  so  strangely  on 
the  ears  of  Mr.  Henry  James,  come  not  to  mind. 
But  I  think  of  rows  of  well-built,  brown  and  ruddy 
homes,  each  with  a  certain  sound  architectural 
distinction,  each  with  its  two  squares  of  neatly 
trimmed  grass  between  itself  and  the  broad,  quiet 
street,  and  each  with  its  family  of  cultured  people 
within.  I  am  reminded  of  deferential  but  un 
ostentatious  servants,  and  of  being  ushered  into 
large,  dignified  entrance-halls.  I  think  of  spacious 
stairways,  curtained  archways,  and  rooms  of  agree 
able,  receptive  persons.  I  recall  the  finished  in 
formality  of  the  high  tea.  All  the  people  of  my  im 
pression  have  been  taught  to  speak  English  with  a 
quite  admirable  intonation;  some  of  the  men  and 
most  of  the  women  are  proficient  in  two  or  three 
languages;  they  have  travelled  in  Italy,  they  have 
all  the  recognized  classics  of  European  literature  in 
their  minds,  and  apt  quotations  at  command.  And 
I  think  of  the  constant  presence  of  treasured  as 
sociations  with  the  titanic  and  now  mellowing  liter 
ary  reputations  of  Victorian  times,  with  Emerson 
(who  called  Poe  "that  jingle  man"),  and  with  Long 
fellow,  whose  house  is  now  sacred,  its  view  towards 
the  Charles  River  and  the  stadium — it  is  a  real, 

224 


CULTURE 

correct  stadium — secured  by  the  purchase  of  the 
sward  before  it  forever.  .  .  . 

At  the  mention  of  Boston  I  think,  too,  of  autotypes 
and  then  of  plaster  casts.  I  do  not  think  I  shall  ever 
see  an  autotype  again  without  thinking  of  Boston. 
I  think  of  autotypes  of  the  supreme  masterpieces  of 
sculpture  and  painting,  and  particularly  of  the 
fluttering  garments  of  the  "Nike  of  Samothrace." 
(That  I  saw,  also,  in  little  casts  and  big,  and  photo 
graphed  from  every  conceivable  point  of  view.)  It 
is  incredible  how  many  people  in  Boston  have 
selected  her  for  their  aesthetic  symbol  and  expression. 
Always  that  lady  was  in  evidence  about  me,  un 
obtrusively  persistent,  until  at  last  her  frozen  stride 
pursued  me  into  my  dreams.  That  frozen  stride 
became  the  visible  spirit  of  Boston  in  my  imagina 
tion,  a  sort  of  blind,  headless,  and  unprogressive 
fine  resolution  that  took  no  heed  of  any  contem 
porary  thing.  Next  to  that  I  recall,  as  inseparably 
Bostonian,  the  dreaming  grace  of  Botticelli's  "Prima 
vera."  All  Bostonians  admire  Botticelli,  and  have  a 
feeling  for  the  roof  of  the  Sistine  chapel — to  so  casual 
and  adventurous  a  person  as  myself,  indeed,  Boston 
presents  a  terrible,  a  terrifying  unanimity  of  aesthetic 
discriminations.  I  was  nearly  brought  back  to  my 
childhood's  persuasion  that,  after  all,  there  is  a  right 
and  wrong  in  these  things.  And  Boston  clearly 
thought  the  less  of  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  when  I  told 
her  he  had  induced  me  to  buy  a  pianola,  not  that 
Boston  ever  did  set  much  store  by  so  contemporary 

225 


THE   FUTURE   IN  AMERICA 

a  person  as  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw.  The  books  she  reads 
are  toned  and  seasoned  books — preferably  in  the  old 
or  else  in  limited  editions,  and  by  authors  who  may 
be  lectured  upon  without  decorum.  .  .  . 

Boston  has  in  her  symphony  concerts  the  best 
music  in  America,  and  here  her  tastes  are  severely 
orthodox  and  classic.  I  heard  Beethoven's  Fifth 
Symphony  extraordinarilv  well  done,  the  familiar 
pinnacled  Fifth  Symphony,  and  now,  whenever  I 
grind  that  out  upon  the  convenient  mechanism  be 
side  my  desk  at  home,  mentally  I  shall  be  transferred 
to  Boston  again,  shall  hear  its  magnificent  aggressive 
thumpings  transfigured  into  exquisite  orchestration, 
and  sit  again  among  that  audience  of  pleased  and 
pleasant  ladies  in  chaste,  high-necked,  expensive 
dresses,  and  refined,  attentive,  appreciative,  bald, 
or  iron-gray  men.  .  .  . 


II 

THEN  Boston  has  historical  associa- 
Antfq°uity      tions    that    impressed    me    like     iron- 
moulded,  leather-bound,  eighteenth-cen 
tury  books.     The  War  of  Independence,  that  to  us 
in  England  seems  half-way  back  to  the  days  of 
Elizabeth,  is  a  thing  of  yesterday  in  Boston.  "  Here," 
your  host  will  say  and  pause,  "came  marching''  so- 
and-so,  "  with  his  troops  to  relieve  "  so-and-so.     And 
you  will  find  he  is  the  great-grandson  of  so-and-so, 
and  still  keeps  that  ancient  colonial's  sword.     And 

226 


CULTURE 

these  things  happened  before  they  dug  the  Hythe 
military  canal,  before  Sandgate,  except  for  a  decrepit 
castle,  existed;  before  the  days  when  Bonaparte 
gathered  his  army  at  Boulogne — in  the  days  of 
muskets  and  pigtails — and  erected  that  column  my 
telescope  at  home  can  reach  for  me  on  a  clear  day. 
All  that  is  ancient  history  in  England  and  in  Boston 
the  decade  before  those  distant  alarums  and  ex 
cursions  is  yesterday.  A  year  or  so  ago  they  restored 
the  British  arms  to  the  old  State-House.  "  Feeling," 
my  informant  witnessed,  "was  dying  down.'*  But 
there  were  protests,  nevertheless.  .  .  . 

If  there  is  one  note  of  incongruity  in  Boston,  it  is 
in  the  gilt  dome  of  the  Massachusetts  State-House 
at  night.  They  illuminate  it  with  electric  light. 
That  shocked  me  as  an  anachronism.  It  shocked 
me — much  as  it  would  have  shocked  me  to  see  one 
of  the  colonial  portraits,  or  even  one  of  the  endless 
autotypes  of  the  Belvidere  Apollo  replaced,  let  us 
say,  by  one  of  Mr.  Alvin  Coburn's  wonderfully 
beautiful  photographs  of  modern  New  York.  That 
electric  glitter  breaks  the  spell;  it  is  the  admission 
of  the  present,  of  the  twentieth  century.  It  is  just 
as  if  the  Quirinal  and  Vatican  took  to  an  exchange  of 
badinage  with  search-lights,  or  the  King  mounted  an 
illuminated  E.  R.  on  the  Round  Tower  at  Windsor. 

Save  for  that  one  discord  there  broods  over  the 
real  Boston  an  immense  effect  of  finality.  One 
feels  in  Boston,  as  one  feels  in  no  other  part  of  the 
States,  that  the  intellectual  movement  has  ceased, 

227 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

Boston  is  now  producing  no  literature  except  a 
little  criticism.  Contemporary  Boston  art  is  imita 
tive  art,  its  writers  are  correct  and  imitative  writers 
the  central  figure  of  its  literary  world  is  that  charm 
ing  old  lady  of  eighty-eight,  Mrs.  Julia  Ward  Howe. 
One  meets  her  and  Colonel  Higginson  in  the  midst  of 
an  authors'  society  that  is  not  so  much  composed  of 
minor  stars  as  a  chorus  of  indistinguishable  culture. 
There  are  an  admirable  library  and  a  museum  in 
Boston,  and  the  library  is  Italianate,  and  decorated 
within  like  an  ancient  missal.  In  the  less  ornamental 
spaces  of  this  place  there  are  books  and  readers. 
There  is  particularly  a  charming  large  room  for 
children,  full  of  pigmy  chairs  and  tables,  in  which 
quite  little  tots  sit  reading.  I  regret  now  I  did  not 
ascertain  precisely  what  they  were  reading,  but  I 
have  no  doubt  it  was  classical  matter. 

I  do  not  know  why  the  full  sensing  of  what  is  ripe 
and  good  in  the  past  should  carry  with  it  this  quality 
of  discriminating  against  the  present  and  the  future. 
The  fact  remains  that  it  does  so  almost  oppressively. 
I  found  myself  by  some  accident  of  hospitality  one 
evening  in  the  company  of  a  number  of  Boston 
gentlemen  who  constituted  a  book-collecting  club. 
They  had  dined,  and  they  were  listening  to  a  paper 
on  Bibles  printed  in  America.  It  was  a  scholarly, 
valuable,  and  exhaustive  piece  of  research.  The  sur 
viving  copies  of  each  edition  were  traced,  and  when 
some  rare  specimen  was  mentioned  as  the  property 
of  any  member  of  the  club  there  was  decorously 

228 


CULTURE 

warm  applause.  I  had  been  seeing  Boston,  drink 
ing  in  the  Boston  atmosphere  all  day.  ...  I  know  it 
will  seem  an  ungracious  and  ungrateful  thing  to  con 
fess  (yet  the  necessities  of  my  picture  of  America 
compel  me),  but  as  I  sat  at  the  large  and  beautifully 
ordered  table,  with  these  fine,  rich  men  about  me,  and 
listened  to  the  steady  progress  of  the  reader's  ever 
unrhetorical  sentences,  and  the  little  bursts  of  ap 
proval,  it  came  to  me  with  a  horrible  quality  of  con 
viction  that  the  mind  of  the  world  was  dead,  and 
that  this  was  a  distribution  of  souvenirs. 

Indeed,  so  strongly  did  this  grip  me  that  presently, 
upon  some  slight  occasion,  I  excused  myself  and 
went  out  into  the  night.  I  wandered  about  Boston 
for  some  hours,  trying  to  shake  off  this  unfortunate 
idea.  I  felt  that  all  the  books  had  been  written, 
all  the  pictures  painted,  all  the  thoughts  said — or  at 
least  that  nobody  would  ever  believe  this  wasn't  so. 
I  felt  it  was  dreadful  nonsense  to  go  on  writing  books. 
Nothing  remained  but  to  collect  them  in  the  richest, 
finest  manner  one  could.  Somewhere  about  mid 
night  I  came  to  a  publisher's  window,  and  stood  in 
the  dim  moonlight  peering  enviously  at  piled  copies 
of  Izaak  Walton  and  Omar  Khayyam,  and  all  the 
happy  immortals  who  got  in  before  the  gates  were 
shut.  And  then  in  the  corner  I  discovered  a  thin, 
small  book.  For  a  time  I  could  scarcely  believe  my 
eyes.  I  lit  a  match  to  be  the  surer.  And  it  was  A 
Modern  Symposium,  by  Lowes  Dickinson,  beyond 
all  disputing.  It  was  strangely  comforting  to  see  it 

229 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

there — a  leaf  of  olive  from  the  world  of  thought  I  had 
imagined  drowned  forever. 

That  was  just  one  night's  mood.  I  do  not  wish 
to  accuse  Boston  of  any  wilful,  deliberate  repudiation 
of  the  present  and  the  future.  But  I  think  that 
Boston — when  I  say  Boston  let  the  reader  always 
understand  I  mean  that  intellectual  and  spiritual 
Boston  that  goes  about  the  world,  that  traffics  in 
book-shops  in  Rome  and  Piccadilly,  that  I  have 
dined  with  and  wrangled  with  in  my  friend  W.'s 
house  in  Blackheath,  dear  W.,  who,  I  believe,  has 
never  seen  America — I  think,  I  say,  that  Boston 
commits  the  scholastic  error  and  tries  to  remember 
too  much,  to  treasure  too  much,  and  has  refined 
and  studied  and  collected  herself  into  a  state  of 
hopeless  intellectual  and  aesthetic  repletion  in  con 
sequence.  In  these  matters  there  are  limits.  The 
finality  of  Boston  is  a  quantitive  consequence.  The 
capacity  of  Boston,  it  would  seem,  was  just  sufficient 
but  no  more  than  sufficient,  to  comprehend  the  whole 
achievement  of  the  human  intellect  up,  let  us  say, 
to  the  year  1875  A.D.  Then  an  equilibrium  was  es 
tablished.  At  or  about  that  year  Boston  filled  up. 


in 

IT  is  the  peculiarity  of  Boston's  in- 
About  weiksiey  tellectual  quality  that  she  cannot  un 
load  again.     She  treasures  Longfellow 
in  quantity.     She  treasures  his  works,  she  treasures 

230 


CULTURE 

associations,  she  treasures  his  Cambridge  home. 
Now,  really,  to  be  perfectly  frank  about  him,  Long 
fellow  is  not  good  enough  for  that  amount  of  in 
tellectual  house  room.  He  cumbers  Boston.  And 
when  I  went  out  to  Wellesley  to  see  that  delightful 
girls'  college  everybody  told  me  I  should  be  re 
minded  of  the  "Princess."  For  the  life  of  me  I 
could  not  remember  what  "  Princess."  Much  of  my 
time  in  Boston  was  darkened  by  the  constant  strain 
of  concealing  the  frightful  gaps  in  my  intellectual 
baggage,  this  absence  of  things  I  might  reasonably 
be  supposed,  as  a  cultivated  person,  to  have,  but 
which,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  I'd  either  left  behind, 
never  possessed,  or  deliberately  thrown  away.  I 
felt  instinctively  that  Boston  could  never  possibly 
understand  the  light  travelling  of  a  philosophical 
carpet-bagger.  But  I  hid — in  full  view  of  the  tree- 
set  Wellseley  lake,  ay,  with  the  skiffs  of  "  sweet  girl 
graduates" — own  up.  "I  say,"  I  said,  "I  wish 
you  wouldn't  all  be  so  allusive.  What  Princess?" 

It  was,  of  course,  that  thing  of  Tennyson's.  It  is 
a  long,  frequently  happy  and  elegant,  and  always 
meritorious  narrative  poem,  in  which  a  chaste  Vic 
torian  amorousness  struggles  with  the  early  formulae 
of  the  feminist  movement.  I  had  read  it  when  I 
was  a  boy,  I  was  delighted  to  be  able  to  claim, 
and  had  honorably  forgotten  the  incident.  But  in 
Boston  they  treat  it  as  a  living  classic,  and  expect 
you  to  remember  constantly  and  with  appreciation 
this  passage  and  that.  I  think  that  quite  typical 
16  231 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

of  the  Bostonian  weakness.  It  is  the  error  of  the 
clever  high-school  girl,  it  is  the  mistake  of  the 
scholastic  mmd  all  the  world  over,  to  learn  too 
thoroughly  and  to  carry  too  much.  They  want  to 
know  and  remember  Longfellow  and  Tennyson — 
just  as  in  art  they  want  to  know  and  remember 
Raphael  and  all  the  elegant  inanity  of  the  sacrifice 
at  Lystra,  or  the  miraculous  draught  of  Fishes ;  just 
as  in  history  they  keep  all  the  picturesque  legends  of 
the  War  of  Independence — looking  up  the  dates  and 
minor  names,  one  imagines,  ever  and  again.  Some 
years  ago  I  met  two  Boston  ladies  in  Rome.  Each 
day  they  sallied  forth  from  our  hotel  to  see  and 
appreciate;  each  evening,  after  dinner,  they  revised 
and  underlined  in  Baedeker  what  they  had  seen. 
They  meant  to  miss  nothing  in  Rome.  It's  fine  in  its 
way — this  receptive  eagerness,  this  learners'  avidity. 
Only  people  who  can  go  about  in  this  spirit  need,  if 
their  minds  are  to  remain  mobile,  not  so  much  heads 
as  cephalic  pantechnicon  vans. . . . 


IV 

I  FIND  this  appetite  to  have  all  the 
me^°w  ano^  refined  and  beautiful  things 
in  life  to  the  exclusion  of  all  thought  for 
the  present  and  the  future  even  in  the  sweet,  free 
air   of  Wellesley's  broad   park,  that  most  delight 
ful,  that  almost  incredible  girls'  university,  with  its 

232 


CULTURE 

class-rooms,  its  halls  of  residence,  its  club-houses 
and  gathering-places  among  the  glades  and  trees.  I 
have  very  vivid  in  my  mind  a  sunlit  room  in  which 
girls  were  copying  the  detail  in  the  photographs  of 
masterpieces,  and  all  around  this  room  were  cabinets 
of  drawers,  and  in  each  drawer  photographs.  There 
must  be  in  that  room  photographs  of  every  picture 
of  the  slightest  importance  in  Italy,  and  detailed 
studies  of  many.  I  suppose,  too,  there  are  photo 
graphs  of  all  the  sculpture  and  buildings  in  Italy 
that  are  by  any  standard  considerable.  There  is, 
indeed,  a  great  civilization,  stretching  over  centuries 
and  embodying  the  thought  and  devotion,  the 
scepticism  and  levities,  the  ambition,  the  pretensions, 
the  passions,  and  desires  of  innumerable  sinful  and 
world-used  men — canned,  as  it  were,  in  this  one 
room,  and  freed  from  any  deleterious  ingredients. 
The  young  ladies,  under  the  direction  of  competent 
instructors,  go  through  it,  no  doubt,  industriously, 
and  emerge — capable  of  Browning. 

I  was  taken  into  two  or  three  charming  club 
houses  that  dot  this  beautiful  domain.  There  was 
a  Shakespeare  club-house,  with  a  delightful  theatre, 
Elizabethan  in  style,  and  all  set  about  with  Shake 
spearean  things;  there  was  the  club-house  of  the 
girls  who  are  fitting  themselves  for  their  share  in  the 
great  American  problem  by  the  study  of  Greek. 
Groups  of  pleasant  girls  in  each,  grave  with  the  fine 
gravity  of  youth,  entertained  the  reluctantly  critical 
visitor,  and  were  unmistakably  delighted  and  re- 

233 


THE   FUTURE   IN   AMERICA 

laxed  when  one  made  it  clear  that  one  was  not  in  the 
Great  Teacher  line  of  business,  when  one  confided 
that  one  was  there  on  false  pretences,  and  insisting 
on  seeing  the  pantry.  They  have  jolly  little  pantries, 
and  they  make  excellent  tea. 

I  returned  to  Boston  at  last  in  a  state  of  mighty 
doubting,  provided  with  a  Wellesley  College  calendar 
to  study  at  my  leisure. 

I  cannot,  for  the  life  of  me,  determine  how  far 
Wellesley  is  an  aspect  of  what  I  have  called  Boston ; 
how  far  it  is  a  part  of  that  wide  forward  movement 
of  the  universities  upon  which  I  lavish  hope  and 
blessings.  Those  drawings  of  photographed  Ma 
donnas  and  Holy  Families  and  Annunciations,  the 
sustained  study  of  Greek,  the  class  in  the  French 
drama  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the  study  of  the 
topography  of  Rome  fill  me  with  misgivings,  seeing 
the  world  is  in  torment  for  the  want  of  living  thought 
about  its  present  affairs.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
there  are  courses  upon  socialism — though  the  text 
book  is  still  Das  Kapital  of  Marx — and  upon  the  in 
dustrial  history  of  England  and  America.  I  didn't 
discover  a  debating  society,  but  there  is  a  large 
accessible  library. 

How  far,  I  wonder  still,  are  these  girls  thinking 
and  feeding  mentally  for  themselves  ?  What  do 
they  discuss  one  with  another?  How  far  do  they 
suffer  under  that  plight  of  feminine  education — 
notetaking  from  lectures?  .  .  . 

But,  after  all,  this  about  Wellesley  is  a  digression 

234 


CULTURE 

into  which  I  fell  by  way  of  Boston's  autotypes.  My 
main  thesis  was  that  culture,  as  it  is  conceived  in 
Boston,  is  no  contribution  to  the  future  of  America, 
that  cultivated  people  may  be,  in  effect,  as  state- 
blind  as — Mr.  Morgan  Richards.  It  matters  little 
in  the  mind  of  the  world  whether  any  one  is  con 
centrated  upon  mediaeval  poetry,  Florentine  pict 
ures,  or  the  propagation  of  pills.  The  common, 
significant  fact  in  all  these  cases  is  this,  a  blindness 
to  the  crude  splendor  of  the  possibilities  of  America 
now,  to  the  tragic  greatness  of  the  unheeded  issues 
that  blunder  towards  solution.  Frankly,  I  grieve 
over  Boston — Boston  throughout  the  world — as  a 
great  waste  of  leisure  and  energy,  as  a  frittering  away 
of  moral  and  intellectual  possibilities.  We  give  too 
much  to  the  past.  New  York  is  not  simply  more 
interesting  than  Rome,  but  more  significant,  more 
stimulating,  and  far  more  beautiful,  and  the  idea 
that  to  be  concerned  about  the  latter  in  preference 
to  the  former  is  a  mark  of  a  finer  mental  quality  is 
one  of  the  most  mischievous  and  foolish  ideas  that 
ever  invaded  the  mind  of  man.  We  are  obsessed  by 
the  scholastic  prestige  of  mere  knowledge  and  genteel 
remoteness.  Over  against  unthinking  ignorance  is 
scholarly  refinement,  the  spirit  of  Boston;  between 
that  Scylla  and  this  Charybdis  the  creative  mind 
of  man  steers  its  precarious  way. 


CHAPTER   XV 
AT    WASHINGTON 


I  CAME  to  Washington  full  of  expec- 
as   tat{ons  an(^  curiosities.     Here,  I  felt,  so 

/vnti-ciimax 

far  as  it  could  exist  visibly  and  palpably 
anywhere,  was  the  head  and  mind  of  this  colossal 
America  over  which  my  observant  curiosities  had 
wandered.  In  this  place  I  should  find,  among  other 
things,  perhaps  as  many  as  ten  thousand  men  who 
would  not  be  concerned  in  trade.  There  would  be 
all  the  Senators  and  representatives,  their  secre 
taries  and  officials,  and  four  thousand  and  more 
scientific  and  literary  men  of  Washington's  institu 
tions  and  libraries,  the  diplomatic  corps,  the  educa 
tional  centres,  the  civil  service,  the  writers  and 
thinking  men  who  must  inevitably  be  drawn  to  this 
predestined  centre.  I  promised  myself  arduous  in 
tercourse  with  a  teeming  intellectual  life.  Here  I 
should  find  questions  answered,  discover  missing 
clues,  get  hold  of  the  last  connections  in  my  inquiry. 
I  should  complete  at  Washington  my  vision  of 
America ;  my  forecast  would  follow. 

236 


AT   WASHINGTON 

I  don't  precisely  remember  how  this  vision  de 
parted.  I  know  only  that  after  a  day  or  so  in 
Washington  an  entirely  different  conception  was  es 
tablished,  a  conception  of  Washington  as  architect 
ure  and  avenues,  as  a  place  of  picture  post -cards 
and  excursions,  with  sightseers  instead  of  thoughts 
going  to  and  fro.  I  had  imagined  that  in  Washing 
ton  I  should  find  such  mentally  vigorous  discussion- 
centres  as  the  New  York  X  Club  on  a  quite  mag 
nificent  scale.  Instead,  I  found  the  chief  scientific 
gathering  -  place  has,  like  so  many  messes  in  the 
British  army  before  the  Boer  war,  a  rule  against 
talking  "shop."  In  all  Washington  there  is  no 
clearing-house  of  thought  at  all ;  Washington  has  no 
literary  journals,  no  magazines,  no  publications  other 
than  those  of  the  official  specialist — there  does  not 
seem  to  be  a  living  for  a  single  firm  of  publishers  in 
this  magnificent  empty  city. 

I  went  about  the  place  in  a  state  of  ridiculous  and 
deepening  concern.  I  went  though  the  splendid 
Botanical  Gardens,  through  the  spacious  and  beau 
tiful  Capitol,  and  so  to  the  magnificently  equipped 
Library  of  Congress.  There  in  an  upper  chamber 
that  commands  an  altogether  beautiful  view  of  long 
vistas  of  avenue  and  garden  to  that  stupendous  un 
meaning  obelisk  (the  work  of  the  women  of  America) 
that  dominates  all  Washington,  I  found  at  last  a 
little  group  of  men  who  could  talk.  It  was  like  a 
small  raft  upon  a  limitless  empty  sea.  I  lunched 
with  them  at  their  Round  Table,  and  afterwards  Mr. 

237 


THE  FUTURE   IN  AMERICA 

Putnam  showed  me  the  Rotunda,  quite  the  most 
gracious  reading-room  dome  the  world  possesses, 
and  explained  the  wonderful  mechanical  organiza 
tion  that  brings  almost  every  volume  in  that  immense 
collection  within  a  minute  of  one's  hand.  "  With  all 
this,"  I  asked  him,  "why  doesn't  the  place  think?" 
He  seemed,  discreetly,  to  consider  it  did. 

It  was  in  the  vein  of  Washington's  detached  dead- 
ness  that  I  should  find  Professor  Langley  (whose 
flying  experiments  I  have  followed  for  some  years 
with  close  interest)  was  dead,  and  I  went  through 
the  long  galleries  of  archaeological  specimens  and 
stuffed  animals  in  the  Smithsonian  Institution  to 
inflict  my  questions  upon  his  temporary  successor, 
Dr.  Cyrus  Adler.  He  had  no  adequate  excuses.  He 
found  a  kind  of  explanation  in  the  want  of  enter 
prise  of  American  publishers,  so  that  none  of  them 
come  to  Washington  to  tap  its  latent  resources  of 
knowledge  and  intellectual  capacity;  but  that  does 
not  account  for  the  absence  of  any  traffic  in  ideas. 
It  is  perhaps  near  the  truth  to  say  that  this  dearth  of 
any  general  and  comprehensive  intellectual  activity 
is  due  to  intellectual  specialization.  The  four 
thousand  scientific  men  in  Washington  are  all  too 
energetically  busy  with  ethnographic  details,  elec 
trical  computations,  or  herbaria  to  talk  about  com 
mon  and  universal  things.  They  ought  not  to  be  so 
busy,  and  a  science  so  specialized  sinks  half-way 
down  the  scale  of  sciences.  Science  is  one  of  those 
things  that  cannot  hustle;  if  it  does,  it  loses  its  con- 

238 


IX    THE    CONGRESSIONAL    LIBRARY 


AT  WASHINGTON 

nections.  In  Washington  some  men,  I  gathered, 
hustle,  others  play  bridge,  and  general  questions  are 
left,  a  little  contemptuously,  as  being  of  the  nature  of 
"gas,"  to  the  newspapers  and  magazines.  Philos 
ophy,  which  correlates  the  sciences  and  keeps  them 
subservient  to  the  universals  of  life,  has  no  seat 
there.  My  anticipated  synthesis  of  ten  thousand 
minds  refused,  under  examination,  to  synthesize  at 
all;  it  remained  disintegrated,  a  mob,  individually 
active  and  collectively  futile,  of  specialists  and 
politicians. 


ii 

BUT  that  is  only  one  side  of  Washing- 

ton  life>  the  side  east  and  south  of  the 
White  House.     Northwestward  I  found, 

I  confess,  the  most  agreeable  social  atmosphere  in 
America.  It  is  a  region  of  large  fine  houses,  of 
dignified  and  ample-minded  people,  people  not  given 
over  to  "smartness"  nor  redolent  of  dollars,  un 
hurried  and  reflective,  not  altogether  lost  to  the 
wider  aspects  of  life.  In  Washington  I  met  again 
that  peculiarly  aristocratic  quality  I  had  found  in 
Harvard — in  the  person  of  President  Eliot,  for  ex 
ample — an  aristocratic  quality  that  is  all  the  finer 
for  the  absence  of  rank,  that  has  integral  in  it — 
books,  thought,  and  responsibility.  And  yet  I 
could  have  wished  these  fine  peopie  more  alive  to 

239 


THE  FUTURE    IN  AMERICA 

present  and  future  things,  a  little  less  established 
upon  completed  and  mellowing  foundations,  a  little 
less  final  in  their  admirable  finish.  .  .  . 

There  was,  I  found,  a  little  breeze  of  satisfaction 
fluttering  the  Washington  atmosphere  in  this  region. 
Mr.  Henry  James  came  through  the  States  last  year 
distributing  epithets  among  their  cities  with  the 
justest  aptitude.  Washington  was  the  "City  of 
Conversation";  and  she  was  pleasantly  conscious 
that  she  merited  this  friendly  coronation. 

Washington,  indeed,  converses  well,  without  awk 
wardness,  without  chatterings,  kindly,  watchful, 
agreeably  witty.  She  lulled  and  tamed  my  purpose 
to  ask  about  primary  things,  to  discuss  large  ques 
tions.  Only  once,  and  that  was  in  an  after-dinner 
duologue,  did  I  get  at  all  into  a  question  in  Wash 
ington.  For  the  rest,  Washington  remarked  and  al 
luded  and  made  her  point  and  got  away. 


in 

AND  Washington,  with  a  remarkable 

Mount  Vemon    unanimity  and  in  the  most  charming 

manner,  assured  me  that  if  I  came  to 

see  and  understand  America  I  must  on  no  account 

miss  Mount  Vernon.     To  have  passed  indifferently 

by  Concord  was  bad  enough,  I  was  told,  but  to  ignore 

the  home  of  the  first  president,  to  turn  my  back  upon 

that  ripe  monument  of  colonial  simplicity,  would  be 

240 


AT  WASHINGTON 

quite  criminal  neglect.  To  me  it  was  a  revelation 
how  sincerely  insistent  they  were  upon  this.  It  re 
minded  me  of  an  effect  I  had  already  appreciated 
very  keenly  in  Boston — and  even  before  Boston, 
when  Mr.  Z  took  me  across  Spuyten  Duyvil  into  the 
country  of  Sleepy  Hollow,  and  spoke  of  Cornwallis 
as  though  he  had  died  yesterday — and  that  is  the 
longer  historical  perspectives  of  America.  America 
is  an  older  country  than  any  European  one,  for  she 
has  not  rejuvenesced  for  a  hundred  and  thirty  years. 
In  endless  ways  America  fails  to  be  contemporary. 
In  many  respects,  no  doubt,  she  is  decades  in  front 
of  Europe,  in  mechanism,  for  example,  and  produc 
tive  organization,  but  in  very  many  other  and  more 
fundamental  ones  she  is  decades  behind.  Go  but  a 
little  way  back  and  you  will  find  the  European's 
perspectives  close  up;  they  close  at  '71,  at  '48,  down 
a  vista  of  reform  bills,  at  Waterloo  and  the  treaty  of 
Paris,  at  the  Irish  Union,  at  the  coming  of  Victor 
Emanuel;  Great  Britain,  for  example,  in  the  last 
hundred  years  has  reconstructed  politically  and 
socially,  created  half  her  present  peerage,  evolved 
the  Empire  of  India,  developed  Australia,  New  Zea 
land,  South  Africa,  fought  fifty  considerable  wars. 
Mount  Vernon,  on  the  other  hand,  goes  back  with 
unbroken  continuity,  a  broad  band  of  mellow  tradi 
tion,  to  the  War  of  Independence. 

Well,  I  got  all  that  in  conversation  at  Washington, 
and  so  I  didn't  need  to  go  to  Mount  Vernon,  after  all. 
I  got  all  that  about  1777,  and  I  failed  altogether  to 

241 


THE  FUTURE   IN  AMERICA 

get  anything  of  any  value  whatever  about  1977 — 
which  is  the  year  of  greater  interest  to  me.  About 
the  direction  and  destinies  of  that  great  American 
process  that  echoes  so  remotely  through  Washing 
ton's  cool  gracefulness  of  architecture  and  her  um 
brageous  parks,  this  cultivated  society  seemed  to  me 
to  be  terribly  incurious  and  indifferent.  It  was  alive 
to  political  personalities,  no  doubt,  its  sons  and  hus 
bands  were  Senators,  judges,  ambassadors,  and  the 
like;  it  was  concerned  with  their  speeches  and 
prospects,  but  as  to  the  trend  of  the  whole  thing 
Washington  does  not  picture  it,  does  not  want  to 
picture  it.  I  found  myself  presently  excusing  my 
self  for  Mount  Vernon  on  the  ground  that  I  was  not  a 
retrospective  American,  but  a  go-ahead  Englishman, 
and  so  apologizing  for  my  want  of  reverence  for 
venerable  things.  "We  are  a  young  people,"  I 
maintained.  "We  are  a  new  generation. " 


IV 

I  WENT  to  see  the  Senate  debating  the 
In  1ieouse"ate~  railway-rate  bill,  and  from  the  Senato 
rial  gallery  I  had  pointed  out  to  me 
Tillman  and  Platt,  Foraker  and  Lodge,  and  all  the 
varied  personalities  of  the  assembly.     The  chamber 
is  a  circular  one,  with  enormously  capacious  galleries. 
The  members  speak  from  their  desks,  other  mem 
bers  write  letters,  read  (and  rustle)  newspapers,  sit 

342 


AT  WASHINGTON 

among  accumulations  of  torn  paper,  or  stand  round 
the  apartment  in  audibly  conversational  groups. 
A  number  of  messenger-boys — they  wear  no  uniform 
— share  the  floor  of  the  House  with  the  representa 
tives,  and  are  called  by  clapping  the  hands.  They 
go  to  and  fro,  or  sit  at  the  feet  of  the  Vice-President. 
Behind  and  above  the  Vice-President  the  newspaper 
men  sit  in  a  state  of  partial  attention,  occasionally 
making  notes  for  the  vivid  descriptions  that  have 
long  since  superseded  verbatim  reports  in  America. 
The  public  galleries  contain  hundreds  of  intermittent 
ly  talkative  spectators.  For  the  most  part  these  did 
not  seem  to  me  to  represent,  as  the  little  strangers' 
gallery  in  the  House  of  Commons  represents,  in 
terests  affected.  They  were  rather  spectators  see 
ing  Washington,  taking  the  Senate  en  route  for  the 
obelisk  top  and  Mount  Vernon.  They  made  little 
attempt  to  hear  the  speeches. 

In  a  large  distinguished  emptiness  among  these 
galleries  is  the  space  devoted  to  diplomatic  repre 
sentatives,  and  there  I  saw,  sitting  in  a  meritorious 
solitude,  the  British  charge  d'affaires  and  his  wife 
following  the  debate  below.  I  found  it  altogether 
too  submerged  for  me  to  follow.  The  countless 
spectators,  the  Senators,  the  boy  messengers,  the 
comings  and  goings  kept  up  a  perpetual  confusing 
babblement.  One  saw  men  walking  carelessly  be 
tween  the  Speaker  and  the  Vice-President,  and  at  one 
time  two  gentlemen  with  their  backs  to  the  member 
in  possession  of  the  House  engaged  the  Vice-President 

243 


THE  FUTURE   IN  AMERICA 

in  an  earnest  conversation.  The  messengers  cir 
culated  at  a  brisk  trot,  or  sat  on  the  edge  of  the  dais 
exchanging  subdued  badinage.  I  have  never  seen  a 
more  distracted  Legislature. 

The  whole  effect  of  Washington  is  a  want  of  con 
centration,  of  something  unprehensile  and  apart. 
It  is  on,  not  in,  the  American  process.  The  place 
seems  to  me  to  reflect,  even  in  its  sounds  and  physi 
cal  forms,  that  dispersal  of  power,  that  evasion  of  a 
simple  conclusiveness,  which  is  the  peculiar  effect  of 
that  ancient  compromise,  the  American  Constitution. 
The  framers  of  that  treaty  were  haunted  by  two 
terrible  bogies,  a  military  dictatorship  and  what  they 
called  "  mob  rule,'*  they  were  obsessed  by  the  need  of 
safeguards  against  these  dangers,  they  were  con 
trolled  by  the  mutual  distrust  of  constituent  States 
far  more  alien  to  one  another  than  they  are  now,  and 
they  failed  to  foresee  both  the  enormous  assimilation 
of  interests  and  character  presently  to  be  wrought 
by  the  railways  and  telegraphs,  and  the  huge  pos 
sibilities  of  corruption,  elaborate  electrical  arrange 
ments  offer  to  clever  unscrupulous  men.  And  here 
in  Washington  is  the  result,  a  Legislature  that  fails 
to  legislate,  a  government  that  cannot  govern,  a 
pseudo-responsible  administration  that  offers  enor 
mous  scope  for  corruption,  and  that  is  perhaps  in 
vincibly  intrenched  behind  the  two-party  system 
from  any  insurgence  of  the  popular  will.  The  plain 
fact  of  the  case  is  that  Congress,  as  it  is  constituted 
at  present,  is  the  feeblest,  least  accessible,  and  most 

244 


AT   WASHINGTON 

inefficient  central  government  of  any  civilized  nation 
in  the  worst  west  of  Russia.  Congress  is  entirely  in 
adequate  to  the  tasks  of  the  present  time. 

I  came  away  from  Washington  with  my  pre 
conception  enormously  reinforced  that  the  supreme 
need  of  America,  the  preliminary  thing  to  any  social 
or  economic  reconstruction,  is  political  reform.  It 
seems  to  me  to  lie  upon  the  surface  that  America  has 
to  be  democratized.  It  is  necessary  to  make  the 
Senate  and  the  House  of  Representatives  more  in 
terdependent,  and  to  abolish  the  possibilities  of 
deadlocks  between  them,  to  make  election  to  the 
Senate  direct  from  the  people,  and  to  qualify  and 
weaken  the  power  of  the  two-party  system  by  the 
introduction  of  "second  ballots"  and  the  referen 
dum.  .  .  . 

But  how  such  drastic  changes  are  to  be  achieved 
constitutionally  in  America  I  cannot  imagine.  Only 
a  great  educated,  trained,  and  sustained  agitation 
can  bring  about  so  fundamental  a  political  revolu 
tion,  and  at  present  I  can  find  nowhere  even  the 
beginnings  of  a  realization  of  this  need. 


IN  the  White  House,  set  midway  be- 
twe6n   the   Washington   of   the    sight 
seers  and  the  Washington  of  brilliant 
conversation,   I   met   President   Roosevelt.     I   was 

245 


THE   FUTURE   IN  AMERICA 

mightily  pleased  by  the  White  House;  it  is  dignified 
and  simple — once  again  am  I  tempted  to  use  the 
phrase  " aristocratic  in  the  best  sense"  of  things 
American;  and  an  entire  absence  of  uniforms  or 
liveries  creates  an  atmosphere  of  Republican  equal 
ity  that  is  reinforced  by  "Mr.  President's"  friendly 
grasp  of  one's  (indistinguishable  hand.  And  after 
lunch  I  walked  about  the  grounds  with  him,  and  so 
achieved  my  ambition  to  get  him  "placed,"  as  it 
were,  in  my  vision  of  America. 

In  the  rare  chances  I  have  had  of  meeting  states 
men,  there  has  always  been  one  common  effect,  an 
effect  of  their  being  smaller,  less  audible,  and  less 
saliently  featured  than  one  had  expected.  A  com 
mon  man  builds  up  his  picture  of  the  men  prominent 
in  the  great  game  of  life  very  largely  out  of  caricature, 
out  of  head-lines,  out  of  posed  and  "characteristic" 
portraits.  One  associates  them  with  actresses  and 
actors,  literary  poseurs  and  suchlike  public  per 
formers,  anticipates  the  same  vivid  self-conscious 
ness  as  these  display  in  common  intercourse,  keys 
one's  self  up  for  the  paint  on  their  faces,  and  for 
voices  and  manners  altogether  too  accentuated  for 
the  gray -toned  lives  of  common  men.  I've  met 
politicians  who  remained  at  that.  But  so  soon  as 
Mr.  Roosevelt  entered  the  room,  "Teddy,"  the 
Teddy  of  the  slouch  hat,  the  glasses,  the  teeth,  and 
the  sword,  that  strenuous  vehement  Teddy  (who 
had,  let  me  admit,  survived  a  full  course  of  reading 
in  the  President's  earlier  writings)  vanished,  and 

246 


AT  WASHINGTON 

gave  place  to  an  entirely  negotiable  individuality. 
To-day,  at  any  rate,  the  "Teddy"  legend  is  untrue. 
Perhaps  it  wasn't  always  quite  untrue.  There  was 
a  time  during  the  world  predominance  of  Mr. 
Kipling,  when  I  think  the  caricature  must  have  come 
close  to  certain  of  Mr.  Roosevelt's  acceptances  and 
attitudes.  But  that  was  ten  years  and  more  ago, 
and  Mr.  Roosevelt  to  this  day  goes  on  thinking  and 
changing  and  growing.  .  .  . 

For  me,  anyhow,  that  strenuousness  has  vanished 
beyond  recalling,  and  there  has  emerged  a  figure  in 
gray  of  a  quite  reasonable  size,  with  a  face  far  more 
thoughtful  and  perplexed  than  strenuous,  with  a 
clinched  hand  that  does  indeed  gesticulate,  though 
it  is  by  no  means  a  gigantic  fist — and  with  quick 
movements,  a  voice  strained  indeed,  a  little  forced 
for  oratory,  but  not  raised  or  aggressive  in  any  fash 
ion,  and  friendly  screwed-up  eyes  behind  the  glasses. 

It  isn't  my  purpose  at  all  to  report  a  conversation 
that  went  from  point  to  point.  I  wasn't  interview 
ing  the  President,  and  I  made  no  note  at  the  time 
of  the  things  said.  My  impression  was  of  a  mind— 
for  the  situation — quite  extraordinarily  open.  That 
is  the  value  of  President  Roosevelt  for  me,  and  why 
I  can't  for  the  life  of  my  book  leave  him  out.  He 
is  the  seeking  mind  of  America  displayed.  The 
ordinary  politician  goes  through  his  career  like  a 
charging  bull,  with  his  eyes  shut  to  any  changes  in 
the  premises.  He  locks  up  his  mind  like  a  powder 
magazine.  But  any  spark  may  fire  the  mind  of 

17  247 


THE   FUTURE   IN  AMERICA 

President  Roosevelt.  His  range  of  reading  is  amaz 
ing  ;  he  seems  to  be  echoing  with  all  the  thought  of  the 
time,  he  has  receptivity  to  the  pitch  of  genius.  And 
he  does  not  merely  receive,  he  digests  and  recon 
structs  ;  he  thinks.  It  is  his  political  misfortune  that 
at  times  he  thinks  aloud.  His  mind  is  active  with 
projects  of  solution  for  the  teeming  problems  around 
him.  Traditions  have  no  hold  upon  him — nor,  his 
enemies  say,  have  any  but  quite  formal  pledges.  It 
is  hard  to  tie  him.  In  all  these  things  he  is  to  a  sin 
gle  completeness,  to  mind  and  will  of  contemporary 
America.  And  by  an  unparalleled  conspiracy  of 
political  accidents,  as  all  the  world  knows,  he  has  got 
to  the  White  House.  He  is  not  a  part  of  the  regular 
American  political  system  at  all — he  has,  it  happens, 
stuck  through. 

Now  my  picture  of  America  is,  as  I  have  tried  to 
make  clear,  one  of  a  gigantic  process  of  growth,  of 
economic  coming  and  going,  spaced  out  over  vast 
distances  and  involving  millions  of  hastening  men; 
I  see  America  as  towns  and  urgency  and  greatnesses 
beyond,  I  suppose,  any  precedent  that  has  ever  been 
in  the  world.  And  like  a  little  island  of  order  amid 
that  ocean  of  enormous  opportunity  and  business 
turmoil  and  striving  individualities,  is  this  District 
of  Columbia,  with  Washington  and  its  Capitol  and 
obelisk.  It  is^a  mere  pin-point  in  the  unlimited,  on 
which,  in  peace  times,  the  national  government  lies 
marooned,  twisted  up  into  knots,  bound  with  safe 
guards,  and  altogether  impotently  stranded.  And 

248 


AT  WASHINGTON 

peering  closely,  and  looking  from  the  Capitol  down 
the  vista  of  Pennsylvania  Avenue,  I  see  the  White 
House,  minute  and  clear,  with  a  fountain  playing 
before  it,  and  behind  it  a  railed  garden  set  with  fine 
trees.  The  trees  are  not  so  thick,  nor  the  railings  so 
high  but  that  the  people  on  the  big  ' '  seeing  Washing 
ton  ' '  cannot  crane  to  look  into  it  and  watch  whoever 
walk  about  it.  And  in  this  garden  goes  a  living 
speck,  as  it  were,  in  gray,  talking,  swinging  a  white 
clinched  hand,  and  trying  vigorously  and  resolutely 
to  get  a  hold  upon  the  significance  of  the  whole  vast 
process  in  which  he  and  his  island  of  government 
are  set. 

Always  before  him  there  have  been  political  re 
sultants,  irrelevancies  and  futilities  of  the  White 
House;  and  after  him,  it  would  seem,  they  may  come 
again.  I  do  not  know  anything  of  the  quality  of 
Mr.  Bryan,  who  may  perhaps  succeed  him.  He,  too, 
is  something  of  an  exception,  it  seems,  and  keeps  a 
still  developing  and  inquiring  mind.  Beyond  is  a 
vista  of  figures  of  questionable  value  so  far  as  I  am 
concerned.  They  have  this  in  common  that  they 
don't  stand  for  thought.  For  the  present,  at  any 
rate,  a  personality,  extraordinarily  representative, 
occupies  the  White  House.  And  what  he  chooses  to 
say  publicly  (and  some  things  he  says  privately)  are, 
by  an  exceptional  law  of  acoustics,  heard  in  San 
Francisco,  in  Chicago,  in  New  Orleans,  in  New  York 
and  Boston,  in  Kansas,  and  Maine,  throughout  the 
whole  breadth  of  the  United  States  of  America.  He 

249 


THE   FUTURE   IN  AMERICA 

assimilates  contemporary  thought,  delocalizes  and 
reverberates  it.  He  is  America  for  the  first  time 
vocal  to  itself. 

What  is  America  saying  to  itself? 

I've  read  most  of  the  President's  recent  speeches, 
and  they  fall  in  oddly  with  that  quality  in  his  face 
that  so  many  photographs  even  convey,  a  complex 
mingling  of  will  and  a  critical  perplexity.  Taken  all 
together  they  amount  to  a  mass  of  not  always  con 
sistent  suggestions,  that  and  conflict  overlap.  Things 
crowd  upon  him,  rebate  scandals,  insurance  scandals, 
the  meat  scandals,  this  insecurity  and  that.  The 
conditions  of  his  position  press  upon  him.  It  is  no 
wonder  he  gives  out  no  single,  simple  note.  .  .  . 

The  plain  fact  is  that  in  the  face  of  the  teeming 
situations  of  to-day  America  does  not  know  what  to 
do.  Nobody,  except  those  happily  gifted  individuals 
who  can  see  but  one  aspect  of  an  intricate  infinitude, 
imagines  any  simple  solution.  For  the  rest  the  time 
is  one  of  ample,  vigorous,  and  at  times  impatient 
inquiry,  and  of  intense  disillusionment  with  old  as 
sumptions  and  methods.  And  never  did  a  President 
before  so  reflect  the  quality  of  his  time.  The  trend 
is  altogether  away  from  the  anarchistic  individualism 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  that  much  is  sure,  and 
towards  some  constructive  scheme  which,  if  not 
exactly  socialism,  as  socialism  is  defined,  will  be,  at 
any  rate,  closely  analogous  to  socialism.  This  is  the 
immense  change  of  thought  and  attitude  in  which 
President  Roosevelt  participates,  and  to  which  he 

250 


AT  WASHINGTON 

gives  a  unique  expression.  Day  by  day  he  changes 
with  the  big  world  about  him  —  contradicts 
himself.  .  .  . 

I  came  away  with  the  clear  impression  that  neither 
President  Roosevelt  nor  America  will  ever,  as  some 
people  prophesy,  "declare  for  socialism,"  but  my 
impression  is  equally  clear,  that  he  and  all  the  world 
of  men  he  stands  for,  have  done  forever  with  the 
threadbare  formulae  that  have  served  America  such 
an  unconscionable  time.  We  talked  of  the  press  and 
books  and  of  the  question  of  color,  and  then  for  a 
while  about  the  role  of  the  universities  in  the  life 
of  the  coming  time. 

Now  it  is  a  curious  thing  that  as  I  talked  with 
President  Roosevelt  in  the  garden  of  the  White 
House  there  came  back  to  me  quite  forcibly  that 
undertone  of  doubt  that  has  haunted  me  throughout 
this  journey.  After  all,  does  this  magnificent  ap 
pearance  of  beginnings  which  is  America,  convey  any 
clear  and  certain  promise  of  permanence  and  fulfil 
ment  whatever?  Much  makes  for  construction,  a 
great  wave  of  reform  is  going  on,  but  will  it  drive  on 
to  anything  more  than  a  breaking  impact  upon  even 
more  gigantic  uncertainties  and  dangers.  Is  America 
a  giant  childhood  or  a  gigantic  futility,  a  mere  latest 
phase  of  that  long  succession  of  experiments  which 
has  been  and  may  be  for  interminable  years — may  be 
indeed  altogether  until  the  end — man's  social  his 
tory?  I  can't  now  recall  how  our  discursive  talk 
settled  towards  that,  but  it  is  clear  to  me  that  I 

251 


THE  FUTURE    IN  AMERICA 

struck  upon  a  familiar  vein  of  thought  in  the  Presi 
dent's  mind.  He  hadn't,  he  said,  an  effectual  dis 
proof  of  any  pessimistic  interpretation  of  the  future. 
If  one  chose  to  say  America  must  presently  lose  the 
impetus  of  her  ascent,  that  she  and  all  mankind 
must  culminate  and  pass,  he  could  not  conclusively 
deny  that  possibility.  Only  he  chose  to  live  as  if 
this  were  not  so. 

That  remained  in  his  mind.  Presently  he  reverted 
to  it.  He  made  a  sort  of  apology  for  his  life  against 
the  doubts  and  scepticisms  that,  I  fear,  must  be  in 
the  background  of  the  thoughts  of  every  modern 
man  who  is  intellectually  alive.  He  mentioned  a 
little  book  of  mine,  an  early  book  full  of  the  deliberate 
pessimism  of  youth,  in  which  I  drew  a  picture  of  a 
future  of  decadence,  of  a  time  when  constructive 
effort  had  fought  its  fight  and  failed,  when  the  in 
evitable  segregations  of  an  individualistic  system  had 
worked  themselves  out  and  all  the  hope  and  vigor  of 
humanity  had  gone  forever.  The  descendants  of  the 
workers  had  become  etiolated,  sinister,  and  sub 
terranean  monsters,  the  property-owners  had  de 
generated  into  a  hectic  and  feebly  self-indulgent  race, 
living  fitfully  amid  the  ruins  of  the  present  time. 
He  became  gesticulatory,  and  his  straining  voice  a 
note  higher  in  denying  this  as  a  credible  interpreta 
tion  of  destiny.  With  one  of  those  sudden  move 
ments  of  his,  he  knelt  forward  in  a  garden  chair — 
we  were  standing  before  our  parting  beneath  the 
colonnade — and  addressed  me  very  earnestly  over 

252 


AT  WASHINGTON 

the  back,  clutching  it,  and  then  thrusting  out  his 
familiar  gesture,  a  hand  first  partly  open  and  then 
closed. 

" Suppose  after  all,"  he  said,  slowly,  "that  should 
prove  to  be  right,  and  it  all  ends  in  your  butterflies 
and  morlocks.  That  doesn't  matter  now.  The  ef 
fort's  real.  It's  worth  going  on  with.  It's  worth  it. 
It's  worth  it — even  then."  .  .  . 

I  can  see  him  now  and  hear  his  unmusical  voice 
saying  "The  effort — the  effort's  worth  it,"  and  see 
the  gesture  of  his  clinched  hand  and  the — how  can 
I  describe  it  ?  the  friendly  peering  snarl  of  his  face, 
like  a  man  with  the  sun  in  his  eyes.  He  sticks  in  my 
mind  as  that,  as  a  very  symbol  of  the  creative  will 
in  man,  in  its  limitations,  its  doubtful  adequacy,  its 
valiant  persistence  amid  perplexities  and  confusions. 
He  kneels  out,  assertive  against  his  setting — and  his 
setting  is  the  White  House  with  a  background  of  all 
America. 

I  could  almost  write,  with  a  background  of  all  the 
world — for  I  know  of  no  other  a  tithe  so  representa 
tive  of  the  creative  purpose,  the  good-will  in  men  as 
he.  In  his  undisciplined  hastiness,  his  limitations, 
his  prejudices,  his  unfairness,  his  frequent  errors, 
just  as  much  as  in  his  force,  his  sustained  courage, 
his  integrity,  his  open  intelligence,  he  stands  for  his 
people  and  his  kind. 


THE    ENVOY 

AND  at  last  I  am  back  in  my  study  by  the  sea.  It 
is  high  June.  When  I  said  good-bye  to  things  it 
was  March,  a  March  warm  and  eager  to  begin  with, 
and  then  dashed  with  sleet  and  wind;  but  the 
daffodils  were  out,  and  the  primulas  and  primroses 
shone  brown  and  yellow  in  the  unseasonable  snow. 
The  spring  display  that  was  just  beginning  is  over. 
The  iris  rules.  Outside  the  window  is  a  long  level 
line  of  black  fleur-de-lys  rising  from  a  serried  rank  of 
leaf-blades.  Their  silhouettes  stand  out  against 
the  brightness  of  the  twilight  sea.  They  mark,  so 
opened,  two  months  of  absence.  And  in  the  in 
terval  I  have  seen  a  great  world. 

I  have  tried  to  render  it  as  I  saw  it.  I  have  tried 
to  present  the  first  exhilaration  produced  by  the 
sheer  growth  of  it,  the  morning-time  hopefulness  of 
spacious  and  magnificent  opportunity,  the  optimism 
of  successful,  swift,  progressive  effort  in  material 
things.  And  from  that  I  have  passed  to  my  sense 
of  the  chaotic  condition  of  the  American  will,  and 
that  first  confidence  has  darkened  more  and  more 
towards  doubt  again.  I  came  to  America  question 
ing  the  certitudes  of  progress.  For  a  time  I  forgot 

254 


ENVOY 

my  questionings;  I  sincerely  believed,  "These  people 
can  do  anything,"  and,  now  I  have  it  all  in  perspec 
tive,  I  have  to  confess  that  doubt  has  taken  me 
again.  "These  people,"  I  say,  "might  do  anything. 
They  are  the  finest  people  upon  earth — the  most 
hopeful.  But  they  are  vain  and  hasty;  they  are 
thoughtless,  harsh,  and  undisciplined.  In  the  end, 
it  may  be,  they  will  accomplish  nothing."  I  see,  I 
have  noted  in  its  place,  the  great  forces  of  construc 
tion,  the  buoyant,  creative  spirit  of  America.  But 
I  have  marked,  too,  the  intricacy  of  snares  and 
obstacles  in  its  path.  The  problem  of  America,  save 
in  its  scale  and  freedom,  is  no  different  from  the 
problem  of  Great  Britain,  of  Europe,  of  all  humanity; 
it  is  one  chiefly  moral  and  intellectual ;  it  is  to  resolve 
a  confusion  of  purposes,  traditions,  habits,  into  a 
common  ordered  intention.  Everywhere  one  finds 
what  seem  to  me  the  beginnings  of  that — and,  for 
this  epoch  it  is  all  too  possible,  they  may  get  no 
further  than  beginnings.  Yet  another  Decline  and 
Fall  may  remain  to  be  written,  another  and  another, 
and  it  may  be  another,  before  the  World  State 
comes  and  Peace. 

Yet  against  this  prospect  of  a  dispersal  of  will, 
of  a  secular  decline  in  honor,  education,  public 
spirit,  and  confidence,  of  a  secular  intensification  of 
corruption,  lawlessness,  and  disorder,  I  do,  with  a 
confidence  that  waxes  and  wanes,  balance  the  crea 
tive  spirit  in  America,  and  that  kindred  spirit  that 
for  me  finds  its  best  symbol  in  the  President's  kneel- 

255 


THE  FUTURE   IN  AMERICA 

ing,  gesticulating  figure,  and  his  urgent  "The  effort's 
worth  it!"  Who  can  gauge  the  far-reaching  in 
fluence  of  even  the  science  we  have,  in  ordering  and 
quickening  the  imagination  of  man,  in  enhancing  and 
assuring  their  powers?  Common  men  feel  secure 
to-day  in  enterprises  it  needed  men  of  genius  to 
conceive  in  former  times.  And  there  is  a  literature 
— for  all  our  faults  we  do  write  more  widely,  deeply, 
disinterestedly,  more  freely  and  frankly  than  any 
set  of  writers  ever  did  before — reaching  incalcula 
ble  masses  of  readers,  and  embodying  an  amount 
of  common  consciousness  and  purpose  beyond  all 
precedent.  Consider  only  how  nowadays  the  prob 
lems  that  were  once  the  inaccessible  thoughts  of 
statesmen  may  be  envisaged  by  common  men! 
Here  am  I  really  able,  in  a  few  weeks  of  observant 
work,  to  get  a  picture  of  America.  I  publish  it. 
If  it  bears  a  likeness,  it  will  live  and  be  of  use ;  if  not 
it  will  die,  and  be  no  irreparable  loss.  Some  frag 
ment,  some  suggestion  may  survive.  My  friend  Mr. 
F.  Madox  Hueffer  was  here  a  day  or  so  ago  to  say 
good-bye;  he  starts  for  America  as  I  write  here,  to 
get  his  vision.  As  I  have  been  writing  these  papers 
I  have  also  been  reading,  instalment  by  instalment, 
the  subtle,  fine  renderings  of  America  revisited  by 
Mr.  Henry  James.  We  work  in  shoals,  great  and 
small  together,  one  trial  thought  following  another. 
We  are  getting  the  world  presented.  It  is  not 
simply  America  that  we  swarm  over  and  build  up 
into  a  conceivable  process,  into  something  under- 

256 


ENVOY 

standable  and  negotiable  by  the  mind.  I  find  on 
my  desk  here  waiting  for  me  a  most  illuminating 
Vision  of  India,  in  which  Mr.  Sidney  Low,  with  a 
marvellous  aptitude,  has  interpreted  east  to  west. 
Besides  my  poor  superficialities  in  The  Tribune  ap 
pears  Sir  William  Butler,  with  a  livid  frankness  ex 
pounding  the  most  intimate  aspects  of  the  South 
African  situation.  A  friend  who  called  to-day  spoke 
of  Nevinson's  raid  upon  the  slave  trade  of  Portuguese 
East  Africa,  and  of  two  irrepressible  writers  upon 
the  Congo  crimes.  I  have  already  mentioned  the 
economic  and  social  literature,  the  so-called  literature 
of  exposure  in  America.  This  altogether  represents 
collectively  a  tremendous  illumination.  No  social 
development  was  ever  so  lit  and  seen  before.  Col 
lectively,  this  literature  of  facts  and  theories  and 
impressions  is  of  immense  importance.  Things  are 
done  in  the  light,  more  and  more  are  they  done  in  the 
light.  The  world  perceives  and  thinks.  .  .  . 

After  all  is  said  and  done,  I  do  find  the  balance  of 
my  mind  tilts  steadily  to  a  belief  in  a  continuing  and 
accelerated  progress  now  in  human  affairs.  And  in 
spite  of  my  patriotic  inclinations,  in  spite,  too,  of  the 
present  high  intelligence  and  efficiency  of  Germany, 
it  seems  to  me  that  in  America,  by  sheer  virtue  of  its 
size,  its  free  traditions,  and  the  habit  of  initiative 
in  its  people,  the  leadership  of  progress  must  ultimate 
ly  rest.  Things  like  the  Chicago  scandals,  the  insur 
ance  scandals,  and  all  the  manifest  crudities  of  the 
American  spectacle,  don't  seem  to  me  to  be  more 

257 


THE  FUTURE   IN  AMERICA 

\ 

than  relatively  trivial  after  all.  There  are  the  uni 
versities,  the  turbines  of  Niagara,  the  New  York 
architecture,  and  the  quality  of  the  mediocre  people 
to  set  against  these.  .  .  . 

Within  a  week  after  I  saw  the  President  I  was  on 
the  Umbria  and  steaming  slowly  through  the  long 
spectacle  of  that  harbor  which  was  my  first  im 
pression  of  America,  which  still,  to  my  imagination, 
stands  so  largely  for  America.  The  crowded  ferry 
boats  hooted  past;  athwart  the  shining  water,  tugs 
clamored  to  and  fro.  The  skyscrapers  raised  their 
slender  masses  heavenward — America's  gay  bunting 
lit  the  scene.  As  we  dropped  down  I  had  a  last 
glimpse  of  the  Brooklyn  Bridge.  There  to  the  right 
was  Ellis  Island,  where  the  immigrants,  minute  by 
minute,  drip  and  drip  into  America,  and  beyond 
that  the  tall  spike-headed  Liberty  with  the  reluctant 
torch,  which  I  have  sought  to  make  the  centre  of 
all  this  writing.  And  suddenly  as  I  looked  back  at 
the  skyscrapers  of  lower  New  York  a  queer  fancy 
sprang  into  my  head.  They  reminded  me  quite 
irresistibly  of  piled-up  packing  cases  outside  a  ware 
house.  I  was  amazed  I  had  not  seen  the  resem 
blance  before.  I  could  really  have  believed  for 
a  moment  that  that  was  what  they  were,  and  that 
presently  out  of  these  would  come  the  real  thing, 
palaces  and  noble  places,  free,  high  circumstances, 
and  space  and  leisure,  light  and  fine  living  for  the 
sons  of  men.  .  .  . 

Ocean,  cities,  multitudes,  long  journeys,  moun- 
258 


ENVOY 

tains,  lakes  as  large  as  seas,  and  the  riddle  of  a 
nation's  destiny;  I've  done  my  impertinent  best  now 
with  this  monstrous  insoluble  problem.  I  finish. 

The  air  is  very  warm  and  pleasant  in  my  garden 
to-night,  the  sunset  has  left  a  rim  of  greenish-gold 
about  the  northward  sky,  shading  up  a  blue  that  is, 
as  yet,  scarce  pierced  by  any  star.  I  write  down 
these  last  words  here,  and  then  I  shall  step  through 
the  window  and  sit  out  there  in  the  kindly  twilight, 
now  quiet,  now  gossiping  idly  -of  what  so-and-so  has 
done  while  I  have  been  away,  of  personal  motives 
and  of  little  incidents  and  entertaining  intimate 
things. 


THE    END 


